Jimmy's Construction

The work needed was minimal, but important to us. He assured us it was possible and said it would look good.  He accepted a down payment of $12,000.00 in September of 2012.  Without having done any work, he came back to me in early December for an additional $8000.00, telling me that he had spent all of that money on materials and needed to purchase more. He promised to have the job completed by Christmas 2012, but didn't start on it until mid-February 2013.
     He parked a flatbed trailer in our driveway and left it the for 6+months.  He left a dump trailer, in front of our house, full of refuge from other construction jobs, and left it there for months. He left equipment and materials in our living room and only showed up to work for a few hours every ten days to two weeks.  He only showed up when I would call and ask what was going on. 
     We tried to work around the delays so we contracted another gentleman to rock the pillars on our backyard patio.  While he was working, Jimmy solicited his services to rock the front of the house. (He obviously did not have his own mason, as previously discussed) and he did not tell him what we had wanted done.
    In summary: He cut the hole too small for the new window. The frame had to be rebuilt. He installed an aluminum window, not a fiberglass window, as promised. He drilled holes for the can lights directly over the windows on the exterior of the house and argued with me when I asked him to move them to shine down on the brick rather than on the windows. Instead of re-routing the AC vent into the new entry, as promised, he stuffed it up into the wall and sheet-rocked over it.  He said that he would reinforce the new entry with 2 x 6's. My husband removed the new sheet-rock and reinforced the the entry, himself. The new entry had been mis-measured and it came in an inch and a half from the existing wall. The existing, exterior light fixtures had been cracked and broken, in this process, but he installed them without saying a word to us.  The exterior vent covers are missing. The exterior trim was half an inch smaller than the existing trim. The door and window were not trimmed in brick so nothing ties the existing brick together with the new rock. He sent a young man to tape and float the sheet rock. He showed up every few days and that job took 6 weeks.  We left town on Wednesday and when we returned Friday afternoon, our front door was unlocked and no one was there.  After three weeks and no progress, I had come home for lunch and apparently, he had come by to pick up some of his tools out of our living room.  Fed up, I wrote him a letter and told him to come get his equipment.  He never offered to make good on any of the work.  He came and picked up his trailer and never brought our keys back to us.  Now, that we are trying to lay new tile, we realized the foundation, for the new entry is un-level causing a slope from left to right.  This was our first and last experience with a general contractor. He has $27,000.00 and we still have to buy materials and complete, fix or redo the work he started, not to mention the $300.00 to change all the locks since he never returned our house keys.