DEF CONSTRUCTION LLC

I hired DEF because they were new on Angies/Home Advisor, and Derek Fowler, the owner, seemed like a responsible person. I initially hired them to paint the interior of the house. I eventually expanded the job to include replacing exterior wood with Hardee Board and paint the exterior. The bathrooms needed remodeling, and Derek showed me photos of prior jobs on shower enclosures, and I decided to go with him. The entire job consisted of remodeling two bathrooms, one with a tub, and converting one to a walk-in shower. We live in Florida, and we had to deal with Derek long distance. The interior painting seemed to go ok although he did not paint everything that he was supposed to.. Derek assured me that he put a drop cloth and plastic on the floor when he painted. We had new carpets in the bedrooms, and that was important. We decided to have Derek remodel the bathrooms. It started to take forever. The bathroom with a tub was completed in a few days, but the walk-in shower took forever. Part of the delay was that my wife wanted a seat in the shower. Derek's crew completed the work, but there was only a space of about 8 inches to enter the shower through the shower door. Derek must have known that, but he completed the seat, nevertheless. Half of the seat had to be removed to try to rectify the situation. The shower was never completely finished because Derek apparently was meeting potential clients and was not supervising the job. I did not realize that attention was not being given to my house, and I gave Derek another job, which was to replace rotten wood on the side of the house with Hardee Board. One and sometimes two workers finished the job quickly, but they discovered that some bricks were loose. Derek said that they would repair them. I just got photos of the work, and there is a long like of missing bricks at the top of the wall. Derek told me that they couldn't get it done correctly. He has no acceptable response for why he didn't tell me that the job was not completed. In fact, he told me, "It looks really good to me" before I found out that it was not done properly. If another worker had not told me, water could have been streaming down the wall into the house. Now, I've had to hire someone to fix the mess. Derek lied to me several times. Two of the new carpets had dirt stains in the middle of them. Derek told me four times that his carpet cleaner was coming in to clean the carpets. Noone cleaned the carpets until I hired Stanley Steemer after Derek and his crew left. I flew into Dallas twice to check the work After Derek told me that it would be completed in a day or two. It was nowhere near completed. There were toilets in the bathroom and old tubs in the dining room. The house was dirty and was a mess. I flew again about a week later after he assured me that it would be completed the next afternoon. There had been virtually no change. He seems to lie constantly about what is happening. When Derek was not at the house, I never saw anyone supervising the work. Three days ago, we sent someone to check the house. The kitchen faucet did not work. I had to hire the plumber who installed the sink. He advised my wife that there was construction debris in the line, likely from the construction in the bathroom. We finally had to tell Derek to leave and take his crew with him. I had to hire someone to clean up his mess. I think Derek might do a good job if it were the only job that he had, but the lack of supervision on the job resulted in a very bad experience. We also had a new refrigerator, which his workers used for drinks. They not only did not clean the refrigerator, but we are also missing a shelf. Derek said it might be in the garage or laundry room. There's more, but I'm out of space. DEF is tries to get contracts with low pricing and lots of promises, which are quickly forgotten or broken.

He was not dependable. Made many promises to be there but never showed up. Wrecked our fence and shoddily supposedly fixed it. We have to hire a fence person to come and fix/replace it now. Promised at least five times to haul away the pile of dirt left in our driveway. Have not seen or heard from him in over a week. We are reporting him to the BBB and everywhere we can. DONâ  T HIRE HIM. HES A LIAR.