Dittrich General Construction

I contracted with Mr. Dittrich to refurbish a bathroom in my primary residence. We agreed to a cost of $5,570 and I provided a downpayment of $2,000 on February 13, 2012, with work commencing on February 14. Mr. Dittrich subcontracted for partial demolition of my shower enclosure and, on/around February 21, subcontracted to do some rough cut plumbing in the shower. The last business communication I had with Mr. Dittrich was on February 23, while he was attempting to schedule a tile contractor to begin work on my shower. From that point forward, there was no business communication and only some basic Text communication. Mr. Dittrich may have had some personal circumstances that affected his work (a possible death in the family), but he made no attempts to keep us updated about his plans to complete the work. Meanwhile, the bathroom was unusable and the plumbing repairs made by his sub-contractor prevented hot water from reaching the remaining bathroom shower. Shortly thereafter, the hot water heater stopped working and had to be replaced- although it is unclear whether this was directly attributable to any work that Mr. Dittrich might have supervised. After several attempts to reach Mr. Dittrich by E-mail and Text, we proceeded to contract with another vendor to complete the work. This was communicated to Mr. Dittrich on/near March 12, 2012. The work was eventually completed to my satisfaction by the other contractor. The work that Mr. Dittrich performed did not approach the $2,000 downpayment that had been paid in good faith. My own personal estimate is that Mr. Dittrich provided < $1,000 of value to the remodeling process. I requested that Mr. Dittrich meet with me to work ou the final financial reconciliation, but there has been no direct communication of any kind since February 29, 2012. On May 7, 2012, my lawyer sent a letter to Mr. Dittrich asking him to discuss the matter, but the letter was not accepted for delivery. For the record, Mr. Dittrich did some remodeling work for me in 2004 and I was very pleased with the results. It disappoints me greatly that things did not work out this time.