D A Parsons Construction

1. Placed ad on Nextdoor after former contractor walked off job. This guy worked for a friend of ours and turned out to be a real loser. We had pulled the permit. He took our money and we received a judgement…end of story. 2. Doug Parsons and two other men responded to my ad. Since Parsons responded first, I called him and he came out. My husband and I immediately liked him and were sure this time would be different. He is a licensed contractor. 3. We signed a contract with Parsons on February 6, 2019. Contract stated it would take 35 days. 4. At first he had two people working with him but that did not last long. One to two days a week he would bring his son. Less work if son came with him. They would show up between 9 – 9:30 work for two hours, disappear for two hours and if they came back, they worked another two hours. 5. Addition took four months…Parsons later blamed rain days. Well there are 80 work days in four months so I know there were not 45 rain days. During a 16 day span, he did not show up at all. 6. During the work on the addition and we did contract with him to demo small bath and old wood floor. He charged us way too much but my husband works full time and did not have time to do it. 7. We moved out of our bedroom in the middle of April and are sleeping upstairs…very hot in the summer. 8. Also had Parsons hang drywall in den, plaster, put up crown molding (according to him this did not include caulking or painting), build three stairs going from den into kitchen and build closet. Parsons contracted out the plaster job. He was going to contract the plaster job out to a guy he knew. We waited almost two weeks for this guy that had one excuse after another (sort of like Parsons). Finally, he pulled some guy off Craigslist and paid him $500 to do the job. Now we have a big den…30 x 17….plaster job looked like crap. I told Parsons it did not look good but his attitude was “oh well”. He told me he would have it fixed when the next plaster job in the addition was done. 9. We called around to get estimates for the completion of the addition…ie…tile, flooring plumbing, electrical, hvac, etc but either they did not show up or they were way too high. Parsons told us he would finish for a price that we thought was reasonable. Unfortunately, we made a mistake in doing this. 10. A walkin tub was ordered for my mom on May 29th and arrived on July 1st. This held up plumbing inspection but Parsons could have done the work in our den and graded our yard per contract. 11. He also said he needed to get our plans revised. This took one week and one day. I finally called the city and they approved them within the hour. 12. He told me that he had left early one Monday to work on our stairs, but about two months after this I watched him pull the treads out of his van, cut them in my side yard and build them in my house. 13. Parsons blamed everything on the tub, the fact that the permit was under our name and that the plans had to be revised. Not the fact that most days he would only worked two to four hours or not show up at all. 14. At this point I was up to here with the renovation and Parsons. I wanted it done. We signed a contract with him in February and it took four months. We signed another contract with him in May and in September it was still not done. We finally had a blow out with him on September 3. He told us that our job was costing him money and asked why we picked him for the job…like we had begged him or something. He also said he needed to finish a kitchen job he had also taken on so he could pay his mortgage. Once again he blamed my mother’s tub and the permit. One excuse after another. Not the fact that many days he didn’t show up or the days when he did, he only worked four hours. He asked us to give him another 30 days. Well a week later he told us that he had to finish this kitchen job. That blew a big hole in the 30 days. We were patient. This went on about two weeks. Then we did not hear from him for 4 days. He would not answer his phone and his mailbox was full. My husband sent him a text and Parsons told him that he had had a double hernia….funny… it coincided with the kitchen job. 15. He finally came back to our house. My husband had committed to a Halloween party for his office and told Parsons that the den and kitchen crown molding had to be completed first. Well when you only work 4 hours or less a day it doesn’t leave much time for work to be done. He finally finished the stairs and I wish I had taken a picture of how he attached the hand rail to the wall. He first cut a section out of the molding. It looked like a puzzle piece. I guess he thought it was ok and we were just supposed to accept it. I know he would not have done it that way in his house. We told him that we did not like the way it looked and he did fixed it a little better but we will probably have it redone. 16. When my mother’s tub came he was here with his son. He insisted on bringing it in. When he did, he scratched my hardwood floor in our hallway. Scratches are deep and we have been told by two different floor guys that we would have to have the entire hallway sanded at the price of around $1000. 17. I talked to his son one day and told him that they needed to finish and he replied, “It is what it is”. 18. After our blow up, I didn’t have much to say to him and he didn’t say much to me. In the final week, he had left early again like at 1:30 on a Monday. The next day, he was outside working on the door to the closet in the den. I was going to the store. I said to him, “Are you going to work all day?” He said, “I am going to finish this door and put a coat on primer on the stairs then he was leaving. I asked him why he couldn’t work on the addition and very childishly he said, “Casey (my husband) said for me to finish the den and that is all I am going to do. He doesn’t have any stain for the stairs yet”. He never asked my husband to get stain. I just lost it with him. SO tired of his childish behavior and excuses and sick of him in my house for 8 ½ months. I said something else don’t remember now. I got in my car and I was furious. I got back out and told him to get his **** and get out of my house. My husband was a little upset with me that I had fired him and talked me into having him call him and see if he would finish. I did not want him back but I finally said ok. Parsons told him no. I was happy that this man was not coming back. 19. He wanted to be fired. He already had admitted that he was losing money on our job because he was greedy and took on too much work and we had to suffer for that fact. He did not tell us in the beginning that he was basically a one man show for 95% of the work so I consider that fraudulent. At the time of firing, there was still quite a bit to do…install HVAC, tile bathroom, insulate underneath new addition, paint, install shower doors, faucets, etc. 20. He had taken our bathroom vanity when it arrived because he said it would be in his way. It took over a week for him to bring it back. When he did, he put it in front of our garage. Now we have a detached garage that is not near our door and the vanity is extremely heavy. He did not want to put it near our door because he did not want us to see him. He also left his things the day I fired him. A ladder, sawhorses, vacuum cleaner, plastering tools, wheel barrow, etc. VERY CHILDISH MAN. We told him to get his tools again and he ignored us. 21. Then we started finding out just how shoddy his work was. We found that the shower knee wall was screwed into drywall only…no stud. Can you imagine if we had tiled that wall?? Didn’t notice it at first because he had left the original wall up.(see pic) 22. Wall he built between toilet and tub at the bottom is just basically paper…will have to have fixed before tile can go up. 23. Drywall tape in new hallway coming off…now we see a lumpy line under the plaster. (see pic) 24. Discovered a crack on the ceiling in the new room…(see pic). This work was done in July or August. Just another example of his shoddy, cheap work. Fixed by Collins Plastering. When Mr. Collins went to fix the crack the ceiling dropped. Collins told me that the ceiling was not screwed in right. He had to skim the ceiling, add about 100 screws and replaster. Collins Plastering also fixed cracks in the new walls and the areas where the drywall tape was coming off underneath the plaster. Collins told us that if Parsons did not use a bonding agent (which we know he didn’t), then we might have more issues with cracking or plaster coming off. 25. Wall in closet was not dry walled, it was already framed in and the wall inside the closet has about a 2 inch gap from the door frame. I guess he didn’t think we would notice this. Fixed by Collins Plastering. Now my husband was on board with me and was glad we fired him when we did. 26. We also went to get our hardwood floor installed in the addition and all the installers said they would not install the floor the same way the other floors in our house were because the floor joists underneath the addition were running a different way then the rest of the house. Just another blunder by Parsons that we had to contend with. 27. Well we went to court the end of November, Parsons asked for a Bill of Particulars (we had to write why we believed he owed us money) so the court date was extended until January 31, 2020. When we went to court this time, we spoke first and then he did and really stretched the truth (and I am being nice here) during his testimony. He knows he did. The judge asked him why he didn’t get his tools and other things and he told her that he didn’t want to be blamed for anything else in the house. LOL. We had asked for $4761 and the judge gave us $1700. $1000 for the scratched hallway floor an $700 for the rework we had done by Collins Plastering. I think he got off easy. Parsons was upset and asked about an appeal. He had 10 days to appeal. Called the court the other day and found out that he did not appeal. It has been over a month since the judgement and he has not paid us or set up a payment plan. I doubt he will. 28. Bottom line….we hooked up with a second loser; this man stretches the truth (remember I am being nice), makes excuses, doesn’t work a full day (most days) (at least not for us), misrepresents himself, and does shoddy work. I am sure he is ok with small jobs…hanging a ceiling fan, screwing in a light bulb, etc, but never hire this guy for a large job. He was very greedy to take on this much work. I hope our addition does not fall off the back of the house. I see why people are very hesitant when it comes to remodeling. There are a lot of bad people out there that will take your money and either not do the work or do shoddy work like Parsons that has to be repaired by someone else. Do yourself a favor….don’t hire Doug Parsons doing business as DA Parsons Construction. I will post again if he decides to pay us the judgement.