BURCH BUILDERS GROUP LLC

I thought it started out all right. Demo was done promptly. HOwever, I failed to see warning signs when the contractor started asking me to pay for some of the materials directly (because it was "easier") with a promise to give a credit for those at the end of work. Foolishly paid $78,000 to contractor so that he could keep his payments up with the subcontractors and purchase materials and so on. Had a harder and harder time reaching him. Could reach his wife but not him--as if he was avoiding me. He became harder and harder to talk to. He got defensive and turned everything little thing around to where somehow it was my fault like when the appliances were to be delivered in the middle of demo. I didn't want them cluttering up my garage until they were ready to go in and the applicance people were willing to store them. I was also worried about the possibility of damage if they just sat there during construction. So, unable to reach Tim Burch, my husband finally talked to his wife who canceled the delivery since she couldn't reach him either. Then a month or so later, Tim became VERY upset that he was "ready for the appliances and needed them 2 days later but tried to blame me that they weren't there. The appliance guy jumped through hoops for me (I need to write a positive review on them) to get them there in two days only to have them sit in the garage for another month. During this time we saw almost no work being done and were unable to reach the builder. I finally reached his foreman who told me that TIm was "having problems" but that everything would "be all right." Well, we never saw them again. The company went bankrupt, and my house was left an unfinished shambles. Worst of all SUCONTRACTORS WEREN'T PAID and they were calling us threatening to put liens on our property even though we had already paid Tim Burch! We had to pay an additional $22,000.00 to finish the job which put us $20,000.00 over the original bid with no credits for the materials we had paid for directly. When we got an electrician in to finish the job for us we learned that not only had a permit never been pulled for the job but a bunch of the work was not done to code. A large amount of that $22,000 was to have the mess brought up to code. This man was a past president of the Washington chapter of NARI and advertised that he was a contractor for the TV show "Extreme Makeover!" Also had good references and had been in business 54 years. My husband and I would have been more than willing to try to work things out for him had he just been up front and honest with us but he hid from us, did not tell the whole truth, and generally can not be trusted.