Trayco Tile

Terrible. He sole money from us and I have been trying to create awareness on the internet. We have a judgement against him but are still going after him in the courts although it will most likely be a futile exercise as he is basically judgement proof. He has no bank accounts and he owns NOTHING! Therefore you can never get anything. I was not the first to sue him last year. Another guy he took $12,000 from sued him last April and got a judgement. James never shows up to court and the judgements against him are automatic. I am now having my attorney drag him into court with his financial records as my lawyer believes he hides his $$ under his wife Marlena Brown of Murfreesboro. My judgement is public record in Davidson County. So is the other gentleman's suit (he sued him under Traco Tile). Next time he doesn't show to court he will be arrested and jailed as his financial records will be subpeonaed. Then I get the collectors after him forever until I am repaid. My lawyer believes he can prove fraud and intent to defraud. His subs Brian, TJ and Billy were terrible also. They were paid by the hour so they milked the job like crazy My saga has been going on for over a year. Originally We had three quotes and he was the only one with a glowing professional reference (from Warren construction GM Adam something) and a personal reference from a friend of ours when they had their house remodeled after a broken pipe flood. James did the floors through the insurance company who hired Warren. Warren subbed the floor job to James and all went fine. James wasn't the lowest quote but he was the only one who was willing to adjust his quote and commission to get us where we wanted to be. We signed a contract and since I had never been screwed by a contractor before I thought it was iron clad enough. I had friends get screwed before though so I learned quickly to document everything. James also worked over text message and I saved every one for my attorney. The contract required 50% up front and 50% at the end. After we paid he came in and tore out our bathroom and we didnt see him again for a month. Then he came to the house with this big concocted story about him getting stiffed on a $100k commercial job he did and was going to go out of business unless we gave him the rest of the $$. We of course were not that stupid however we also didn't want to lose thousands of dollars in deposit. So I drew up a new contract and offered him very small deposits for additional work. After all, at that point we had no reason to believe he was lying to us and wanted to help him. We added upstairs tile floors to both full baths, had all of the wallpaper stripped, walls patched and primed and gave him a hard wood floor deposit to put wood in the rugged rooms downstairs. He would have his guys sporadically show up for 1 hr a day (when they actually showed) barely doing anything for the month of April. Then the May floods hit. He got subbed to the Lee Company to rip out duct work and insulation from 200 homes and came into some money (so he told us). Then the work took off at our house. He got the shower built, the tile done upstairs and down, the walls done, the closet floors done, the granite for the vanity, the sinks and vanity hardware and shower hardware. Oh, he also told me that his cousin was the Kohler rep in East TN and he could get a great discount. All a lie he said his cousin wouldn't call him back or give him a discount of course after we paid. He hit the $$ wall in June and I still didn't have my tub, tub hardware, toilet. He came to me and asked to cancel the hardwood floor portion of the job. I had anticipated this and drafted a solid cancellation contract that I had him sign (my attorney still can't believe I got him to agree to sign it not that it mattered at this point). He owed me a lot more than the floor deposit. He never got us a vanity as per the original contract, we had to buy our own after he dragged his feet too long. Mirror and linen cabinet too. I also ended up repaying for my tub, hardware and toilet so I could get the job done. That was the end of July. Then we experienced problems with the pipes. He had a plumber over for a recommendation, James came over and cut a huge hole in the wall in my great room to get at the pipes for the plumber and disappeared the next day leaving me with the hole and no plumber. This was early August. Mid August I started the legal process. after all credits and debits were calculated he owes me over $10k.