Cook Construction & Design LLC

This contractor was hired by us to rebuild our front porch which was starting to fall apart. They wanted about $1,000 dollars for demo so I decided to do the demo myself. The contractors spent 1 day on the front porch and got it pretty much completed in that day however it was not finished. The sides of the stairs were not finished or closed off as I specified to the contractors. The contractor stated that they had to use extra materials and labor to reinforce some of the frame, of which they did not contact us about for permission for any extra cost. After looking under the front porch, I can not see all the lumber that the contractor itemized in the billing invoice. In fact, after looking close, I noticed that the supports for two beams where not and are not supported at all. The itemized list also stated that all the material was pressure treated however I can see that numerous boards are not pressure treated lumber. There is also an area where some boards stick out about the adjacent boards and need to be further sanded to create a level area. The description of the job also included two holes at 48" below grade for new post supports that were not done. The second part of this job was for the contractor to demolish the existing stairs from the first floor to the basement and rebuild a finished stair case from the first floor to the basement. The new stair case was to be a finished stair case that was ready to be stained. The problems with this particular phase of the job are as follows.The materials used were supposed to be of a finished material ready to be stained. The material that was used was a pine wood that was rough and not ready for stain. The treads on the stairs are not actual treads but are just basic 2x6 pine material. All the treads and risers were nailed down and all of the nails can be seen where as a finished and stain-able stair case would not have nails showing all over. Some of the treads are not level and when you walk on them you can feel your foot is on an angle. The reveal on all the skirt boards on the stair case are not the same. One reveal is 1/8th of an inch while the reveal on the other side of the stairs is about 3/4 of an inch. The treads and risers ALL have gaps. For the treads you can look at each stair and see a gap of various measurements between the treads and the skirt boards or risers. In some cases it looks as though the treads were scribed but not cut along the scribe. None of the treads are actual treads with bull nose but instead are only 2x6 materials. For the risers you can look at each step and see gaps between the risers and the skirt boards. In some cases these range from 1/8 th of an inch to 1/4 of an inch. In all of the risers and treads they used nails instead of screws which, although not the preferred method to fasten stairs would have been acceptable if they were not all over the treads and risers in places that will be seen on stained material. The landing that separates the first floor from the basement, the cut material has the grain showing to the outside instead of a bull nose for a finished look. This landing has 2x1 material planks instead of a plywood so that a hard wood flooring can be installed as was discussed by us to the contractors after the stairs were completed not to our liking. The stairs were also not built with the thickness of the hard wood flooring in mind which will cause the bottom stair to be about 1/2 of an inch to 3/4 of an inch shorter than all of the other stairs. Also please note that materials that the contractor listed as being used were not used at all. We tried to talk to the contractor several times through out the process and actually stopped the construction in order to work out the details and make sure that the way we wanted things done were the way things were going to be done. The contractor got an attitude and kept saying stuff like "you can caulk that" or "when you caulk that it would look fine" or "if you buy this material you can cover this part up" etc. After several discussions in which it was evident that the contractor was not going to do what we hired them to do, even giving us two options in which we could either take the extra work done on the front stairs which was not authorized at no charge and we deal with the stairs as is or he would charge us for the extra work and would finish the basement stairs to our liking, we decided to have them finish the drywall they had started and end the construction. Unfortunately, the contractor was paid in full so we could not with hold payments due to it being incomplete or not how it was supposed to be done. After the contractors left we did some more research on this company and found numerous people that have complaints about them. Even though we did some research on the company by calling references we did not do an extensive background on them. The reviews we have gotten from several people are consistent with what happened to us.