DAVID JOHNSON GENERAL CONTR

Initially, the written contract was was extremely poor. It didn't explain how the price was determined and gave a few prices for all the major items that could be deducted if I purchased them myself. These deductables only accounted for less than 20% of the total but were listed as labor items. I modified the contract by adding a note with the understanding that the actual work was going to be different and we would determine the price by the labor based on a $75/hr rate. The job was supposed to be done completely by Dave Johnson and an assistant with minimal assistance from me and be done in about a week. As soon as the bathroom was completely stripped bare to the studs and slab, he asked for the second of three payments totalling $9,000. At this point I didn't want anything to hamper progress so I promptly payed (big mistake). This is when things started to go bad. He started making mistakes that cost many hours of rework like putting the shower drain in the wrong place in the concrete. Working short days, after one week the bathroom barely had walls. He often found excuses to leave and then not return for the rest of the day, or he left early or came late without a helper. His helper did better quality work than him, and we were sorry when we knew Dave was going to do anything personally. His tile work was worse than an amateur and when we pointed out how bad it was, he blamed the studs not being straight. His helper (a student) was able to do it much better with the same studs. I realized he was completely incompetent. Tiles were falling of the wall and were just slapped on the wall with no spacers and no attention to detail. His painting was terrible as well, as he rushed everything without doing the proper preparation or planning. I had to start fixing his work every day after he left to not fall farther behind schedule. I even started doing his work for him when he had some excuse to not show up ("it might rain" even when there was plenty of work to do inside). I had to remind him many times he had to fix a hole in the wall he punched through when removing the old bathtub. It took him three hours to fix the damage he said he could do in 5 minutes. In the end, I did a substantial amount of the work at a much higher quality and its not my expertise. I had to closely inspect everything he touched and tell him everything in minute detail to get him to do anything acceptable. He couldn't cut a clean straight line, or a proper 45 degree miter, or fit anything together well. Shockingly, it seems he's not good with his hands. I wanted him out, even though the job wasn't finished. I tracked all the hours, and calculated he earned less than what he had already been paid. He insisted that I pay him the total contract price and wanted more money for "extras". I bought all the major items which cost me more than double his allowance but I could only deduct the $2000. He failed to understand how the price should be reduced for the work he didn't do. In the end I made some deductions and paid him just to not get a lien placed on my house, get back to finishing the bathroom myself and never see his face again. I'm now seeing his paint work starting to peel and see where he completely missed painting (big section on the door that is still primer). I'm still fixing details that should have been done better in the first place (grouting, paint). My impression in the end is that he is an incompetent fool who talks like he's good but can't produce. He's greedy and has a selective bad memory, practices revisionist history and who can't see his own poor quality until someone else firmly draws his attention to it. He slops through his work as fast as he can and will only go back and fix his mistakes if you force him. If you can get past the excuses, and he agrees to "fix" it, it may not really be fixed anyway due to his incompetence. I feel he is at best a low quality laborer, not a general contractor. He may be suffering from some form of dementia.