Arcadia Construction Enterprise, LLC

In my opinion and personal experience, the guy who runs this company, Joshua Pams, attempted to scam my insurance company for $53,000, for a $13,000 job. He provided unskilled labor and was negligent throughout the entire process. I have since filed a complain with Ken Paxton, Texas State Attorney General which should be available for your inspection, and may pursue legal action as necessary for Deceptive Trade Practices and Defamation.

Austin, I'm warning you....do not HIRE....I have to take Joshua Pams to court. He does not know what he is doing. I have to hire someone to fix all his mistakes, with the short list of items he completed. I don't know where you can post pictures, but I will gladly post. This construction company has been my worst construction nightmare. My cabinets that he painted....are chipping after a couple of days (and our kitchen isn't even being used as it's under construction). They look terrible when you feel and look close. He did not sand the lacquer off of my solid wood doors and the paint is not adhering to my once smooth cabinets, they now feel like sand paper! In fact, the sanding technique was not used at all. I have had several professional paint contractors that explained what was done wrong, but Joshua believes in his chipping cabinets, and says he can touch that up in minutes. Honestly, it's only going to get worse. I now have to buy new doors as it would cost me more to fix and strip the work he has done. When needing to modify a cabinet his idea was to take one of my existing cabinets, cut in half, and put back together to resize. That is his cabinetry skills/ideas? He asked me if I understood, and I did. In horror, I couldn't believe this was the solution from a guy who came to my house to profess to be an expert meticulous cabinet maker and could match my cabinets perfectly to get my business. He has only done less than 50% of the demo, and left 1/2 that demo trash in my garage. My husband and I had to finish the demo. He never put the hardware on the cabinets. He had some sub contractor paint my cabinets and wanted his 3rd payment. That was almost three weeks ago. I had to contact him after a couple of weeks and to ask him when he was going to come back and finish the rest of the job. He left with holes in my house, no handles on my cabinets, and list of things to finish before countertops were going to be installed. He came by later that week, and covered some of the holes in the wall, left and said he'd be back. He never returned and after a long text to him on that Sunday with my frustrations, he called me immediately to terminate our relationship, it just wasn't working out, and told me he would give me any monies owed. I told him to work on that short list of items he completed with pricing. That was extremely agreeable with me, as I didn't want him to ruin anything else in my house. He comes to my house with no list, but a lawyer, who introduces himself as someone who works with Arcadia Construction. This lawyer tells me I need to let Josh finish the work thats in the contract before I can complain about his work. One day I hope I will I find that funny as it's taken a month to demo or half demo, move a couple of cabinets, and paint/ruin them. I have also given Joshua a chance to defend himself and tell me if my list of work that he's done and the problems with them are not valid. Crickets. This is just a short list of my problems with Arcadia Construction, this guy has lied, apologized, overpromised and under delivered. I read a review that said (I read after I hired him) if you hire him be prepared to get a lawyer.....yep. Yes, I'm livid, and understandably so if you saw the work in my kitchen, the heart of my home. I paid Joshua over $10K and got nothing but problems. So, I am going to take the time to warn others, I don't want anyone to go through what I'm going through. I have pictures, witnesses and documentation of my experience. He is a affable guy, fun to probably have a beer with, but I strongly warn against hiring him. Recently, I took the paint used to paint my cabinets to Benjamin Moore, along with a sample cabinet. They said that the instructions were not followed. No sanding was done, and that particular paint states on the label that it should not be used in sprayers because paint thinner will ruin the paint. They did neither. The Benjamin Moore rep called him to get more info and explain the process for using that paint.....Joshua Pams would not even disclose where he bought the paint. He would not cooperate answering basic questions to a Benjamin Moore rep. What does that reveal?

Summary: 
We lost tens of thousands of dollars by hiring Josh Pams of Arcadia Construction. 

• -Josh Pams, Owner of Arcadia Construction, left the country shortly after being paid (for Croatia, where he had no cell or e-mail access)
• -Josh Pams would not provide   us a refund and intimidated us with the contract we had signed and by saying he was legally able to put a lien on our house for the full  amount of the contract, even though he hadn't done the work 
• -Josh's crew  was disgruntled that he had left the country without providing details and said they weren't being paid enough- Arcadia Construction did sub-par work throughout our house
• -We were not able to move into our house  on-time and had to extend our lease for 22 days and had to pay more than $1,200 of extra rent
• -When we did move in, we only had one source of running water in the guest bathroom, no hot water, no functioning kitchen, wires were exposed everywhere, and we had to hire someone immediately to put lights up in 3 of the rooms 
• -We called a Certified Electrician to look at the work Arcadia Construction did in our kitchen and bathrooms- it was found to be UNSAFE FOR LIVING, all the appliances had been run on one line, causing a risk for over heating and a fire hazard, and nothing was grounded. We had to pay THOUSANDS of dollars to have the electrical re-done
• -Our original, solid hardwood floors were damaged when they used improper equipment-  we were quoted $30K to replace the entire floor or $15K just to make it presentable by a hardwood flooring company in Austin - huge deep gouges dings and scratches are present throughout 

-Arcadia Construction workers got in a physical altercation at our house, yanking the water hose so violently the faucet wasshaking in the wall, as witnessed by the masonry company who was replastering our pool
-Workers failed to follow directions given multiple times in Spanish and English to keep the water running to our pool so the freshly-laid plaster, which we paid $4,000 for could set, consequentially, the paster cracked and had to be relaid.
-Arcadia Construction moved our gas line but failed to notify the city or follow the proper process, consequentially, the city would not turn on our gas until they did a full inspection, which was not immediately available, since we had no way to cook or get hot water without gas,  we had to buy a new electric cooktop and water heater
-$1,000 of tools, yard equipment etc went missing from our house over the duration of the project 
-We weren't able to complete the original design we were so excited about due to the damages and extra expenses caused by Arcadia Construction 
-After Arcadia Construction demoed our Master Bath, they left the opening for the toilet uncapped, providing a direct line from the City of Austin sewer into our house- consequentially, we have a rat infestation de
-Josh provided the estimate then inflated the price by 30% a few days later on the actual contract- as he had reworded and re-arranged all the items on the contract from where the estimate was and started the conversation by saying he had reduced the price, we didn't notice until later. In a conversation we recorded with him, he made statements along the lines that the old estimate was invalid and he could charge whatever he wanted since nothing on the actual contract was itemized. 
-Despite the fact that the bathroom had no running water, a fan that wasn't even screwed into the studs and had simply been placed in the ceiling and did not work, a vanity that had been damaged and was hanging crookedly, tiles that had been scratched, a shelf that he been screwed in crooked, pipes that were masking taped together, unfinished drywall, a large finger print in the grout and a vanity light that was hanging crooked and loose, Josh insisted that the bathroom was substantially complete and that we owed him more than $10K to start the next phase of the job, which he said we legally could not get out of 
-Children were on site "helping" on multiple occassions- the most alarming time was when a toddler was on-site covered in paint and water despite exposed wires and saws being at arms length
-Beer cans were found on-site 
-When we asked the crew to stop this behavior they failed to do so 
-When tried to work this out directly with Josh Pams but he failed to provide direct answer to direct questions, instead, he would launch into his sales pitch "my goal is to deliver a quality project on time and on budget" - a little to late when you are 40 days behind schedule and thousands of dollars in damages have been done. 
In sort, we gave Josh $18,900 and we lost more than that when you consider damages. Nearly everything needed to be redone. Josh continued to ask us for additional payments. We have also tried to resolve this with him through the BBB and so far have not received a response. Josh has gotten some positive reviews, but in my opinion, he seems to be growing his business faster than he can handle (from what we can tell from our security camera footage and what the foreman says, he spent less than 3 hours on-site over almost 2 months) and has a contract that seems to feel allows him to miss timelines and do damages without and repercussions.  Josh regularly relies on the contract he provides clients, which provides very poor protections for the client, and when confronted about fixing damages or how the price of work that has been done, he repeatedly says "what's the contract say?" Josh presents well and is very smart, which makes him an excellent sales person. 
We have extensive photos, videos (form our security camera and smartphones), recorded conversations, and the statement of an Expert Witness / Certified Inspector and other construction industry professionals documenting the claims made above. 

Very well.  Updated me on FaceTime and was easily reached via text, email and phone.  House looked so much better and updated.  Very happy with his work.

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