Did you see pics of his "craftsmanship"?
They are in this thread
Fair point, I had not seen those. That's pretty horrible.
Typical 'journalism' missed a huge chunk of the story....
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Did you see pics of his "craftsmanship"?
They are in this thread
Can confirm the presence of a miniature Giraffe, amongst other "Go be Poor Somewhere Else" items which made my wallet sigh.Again, did you sign off on this project?
Did you see it in person?
Did you see the finished project in any way or form?
Do you know for a fact that there wasn't a concern/question/punch list still left to do?
No?
Then what the fuck are you going on about?
Read my initial post. I want more info to make a determination. You on the other hand seem to have your mind made up and are/were in construction at some point. So either we can agree to disagree and wait to see if we ever get more info out of this, or you can come to Utah and build my miniature giraffe a golden toilet and we'll see whats up when I decide to 'lose my wallet' for 2 or 3 days afterwards.
A DIY 'r said he used that trick to lay glass block in his home.A friend is a block and brick contractor. (He only does the high end homes). He was telling me about a guy that told him that he was too expensive and would do the block work himself. He drove by the job and the block was laid so he stopped to talk to the homeowner and check out the work. He said that the lines were level and the joints looked pretty good for a beginner. Then the guy told him his trick was to use marbles as spacers. 1500 block and 4 marbles per block. That's a lot of marbles.
Hey, here is my shower I’m just finishing lmfao!!!Oh but wait.....
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Dream Home Remodels of Colorado photos
Here's a video of them tearing it up with the phone number on the back of the shirt!!www.yelp.com
Anyone want to try and figure out why after demanding money 'communication broke down' after looking at this...
Yeah, I'd come back and hit this shit with a hammer too.
As a skilled stonemason let me say thats shit work, bubba.Nah. I don't do tile work. I'm not on meth.
Here's what I do.
View attachment 7704631
View attachment 7704627
I'll be damned, I thought I was the only one that offered secret hiding spots in the stone. (I should have gone back and checked them.)As a skilled stonemason let me say thats shit work, bubba.
Just kidding,beautiful job. where did you get the limestone, out north east of Burnet. I used to find pieces with lots of fossils in it. Always tried to set them so the fossil showed, the homeowners loved it. Andother thing thaqt I got a lot of recognition for was building in 'hiding places'. Id build a cavity about the size of a shoebox, then leave one rock that could be removed to access the cavity. told people thats where they could stash the gold or family jewels. I got pretty well known for that. Learned the trick from visiting old European castles.
After watching this threads for a few days, I've decided it's best if contractors avoid doing business with homeowners and homeowners should never hire contractors.
I never give a quote over the phone. I tell them if they're wanting something like whats on my website, those pools start at $$$.I got quotes several years ago for a gas line run. $1K, $3K, and $7K! I think some of these contractors simply make their living off a few rich/older people that simply don't know any better. Whenever a contractors wants my address before even giving me a rough estimate of a basic job, I know he's going to be sandbagging the estimate.
I’m gonna add to this. I agree with everything you said. Good words to live by when dealing with contractors. But, I want to point out that, if you have financed the house or project in any way, other than paying cash with your own money, then the lender will force you to pay, regardless if the job has been made right or not. Ask me how I know!Simmer down there sunshine.
From the video, final amount was due 9/6. Since today is 9/15, I'm going to guess it happened a few days ago.
Is what world do you live in where you go into someones' house with a sledge hammer 2-3 days after completing work? An intelligent person would put these few things together and deduct that everything is probably not as it seems. This looks like something that would happen after either weeks/months of being ghosted or is some form of retribution for something else. This isn't something a rational person does after a few days.
From their statement, it said that they completed the work and wanted paid that day. There's three things you never do with a contractor;
never take off work to meet them at your house because 83% of the time they wont fucking show up
never pay them up front because then best case, they'll run the bill up and want more money, worse case they'll disappear
never pay them the minute they say they are done because anything found to be wrong or not completed after the money exchanges hands has like a 2.87689% chance of actually being fixed
Have you gone in and inspected the work that was done? No? Then how do you know shit about any of this? It's also strangely weird that these same guys would then come in and destroy it 2-3 days afterwards. That part makes this really odd for multiple reasons; why destroy your chances of being paid at all within a few days of completion? Why destroy something that you said was completed and you wanted paid for, 2 minutes after being done? Why whine about this costing weeks of time and thousands of dollars and then hitting it with a mallet 2 days later even if she did just want a week or whatever to 'try it out'? Does not compute. There's something else to this.
If the work was done correctly, she obviously owes them. However, the story versus the events, don't make sense to anyone who doesn't want to just see what they want to see, at all.
What's actually going to come out of this is, even if she was in the wrong, contractor guy is losing his license and being sued/having charges filed while he will basically put some ghetto contractor's lien on some house she's probably upside down on after refi'ing it to pay for her construction work.
I got quotes several years ago for a gas line run. $1K, $3K, and $7K! I think some of these contractors simply make their living off a few rich/older people that simply don't know any better. Whenever a contractors wants my address before even giving me a rough estimate of a basic job, I know he's going to be sandbagging the estimate.
Come to think of it, I beleive (according do our best evidence) that we are all originally African...
Having done jobs for government entities, there is a reason why people charge them 3x more and it’s not just being greedy.Some years ago our club considered installing chainlink fencing to block the front of our range (on an AF base). Range master contacts a local fence company with a detailed diagram including measurements, but did not give a location. Bid was 5k. Because it was over 3k, it was turned over to base contracting who sent it to three different companies. Lowest bid was 17k...from the company that originally bid 5k.
Having done jobs for government entities, there is a reason why people charge them 3x more and it’s not just being greedy.
dealing with gov entities are a pain in the fucking ass at every step. Some dingle berry with a clipboard, hard hat, hi vis vests, and a safety glasses constantly sticking his nose into shit, and then the giant suitcase full of paperwork it takes to get your money is ridiculous. Doing work for a gov entity makes you feel like a circus animal.
Agreed. From my experience doing anything for the gov is a pain in the ass! GSA anyone lol?Having done jobs for government entities, there is a reason why people charge them 3x more and it’s not just being greedy.
dealing with gov entities are a pain in the fucking ass at every step. Some dingle berry with a clipboard, hard hat, hi vis vests, and a safety glasses constantly sticking his nose into shit, and then the giant suitcase full of paperwork it takes to get your money is ridiculous. Doing work for a gov entity makes you feel like a circus animal.
Me. LMAOView attachment 7705452What kind of cheap bastard has a new tile shower done, but doesn’t replace the shower valve? Especially that shitty ass Delta I would have put a new Moen Posi Temp in much better valve than the one that’s in there now.
Next time, when they tell you their going to take you to court tell them "gladly."I’m gonna add to this. I agree with everything you said. Good words to live by when dealing with contractors. But, I want to point out that, if you have financed the house or project in any way, other than paying cash with your own money, then the lender will force you to pay, regardless if the job has been made right or not. Ask me how I know!
I’ll give you a small synopsis. Was building a new place a few years ago. 90% of the job was fantastic but I did have issue with some of the contractors subs. One of them, a roofer and the other was a few people but involved the floors. First we will start with the roofer. Dude worked out a price and contract with said contractor and found out he was going to lose his ass or was losing his ass because he failed to look over all the stuff the contractor was showing him, aKA size of place, roofline, pitch and so on. So he came out and did the job and kept cutting corners and I kept pointing it out to the contractor who kept pointing things out to him and kept forcing the guy to come back. And I would have gladly paid the guy more money but I didn’t find all this out until hindsight. I thought the dude was just being a shitty dude but that was not the case. On the other hand, his failure to read docs properly shouldn’t have been on me. Anyways that actually gets all worked out in the end but not till after I hold this guys money and some flooring guys money.
Now on to the flooring. When I was building this place it basically monsooned, in the winter like every day. One of the wettest winters I remember. Let’s just say on the flooring that the hardwoods were not installed properly and the subfloor beneath them got so warped/buckled that there is really bad swelling in parts that they then laid hardwood on top of, without nailing or anything of the sort. Basically a floating hardwood floor on top of a buckled subfloor. You can imagine the problems here. Still problematic to this day.
Anyways to make a long story short, I withheld payment for these guys because they failed to make things right in my eyes and so did the contractor. I was like you know what it’s my money in the end and I’m not happy with the job. So I told my wife to withhold the checks. I don’t know how many weeks go by and the contractor calls me telling me I need to pay because he has had to pay for all this crap out of his own pocket and blah blah. Well, that was his problem in my eyes, not mine. I wouldn’t have paid them till they made the job right. Anyways I still don’t pay and after a little while we try to start working things out but then I get a call from my financial backers lawyers explaining to me that the contractors lawyers called them and explained the problem and they were explaining the problem to me and more or less told me that I had to pay and if I wouldn’t that they would take me to court and force me to pay.
In the meantime, they would go ahead and pay said contractor on my behalf until we worked this out. I was like wait a second, you are telling me that they can basically come in here and not do the job they were paid to do to my satisfaction since it is my money that I will be having to pay back and my house I have to live with for an x number of years? They basically said yes! Talk about some crooked shit! So you can’t even withhold money as leverage to force people to do the right thing unless you are straight up financing this all out of your pocket. I think that’s super fucked up! In the end, I just paid as I didn’t want to burn all my money up in courts fighting one of the largest financial institutions in the country. But here I am stuck with some semblance of shitty work. And pulling all the floors to replace them was not an option. I’ll leave it at that. The building industry seems to me to be one of the most crooked unchecked industries out there. I’m not saying all contractors are bad by any means but you can certainly see why they get a bad rep. Oh and after all this went down, the contractor did come to me and apologize saying that he was not able to use all of his regular trusted people because they were all on other jobs. Boy did that make me feel better.
Well, this wasn’t engineered wood, but I see your point. I might play hardball next time but I hope I don’t have to!Next time, when they tell you their going to take you to court tell them "gladly."
More often than not they'll change their tune rather quickly. He who holds the cash holds the cards. If the contractor sued you, it'd cost him a small fortune in legal fees. It's way easier and more cost effective to fix the problem when it comes to engineered hardwoods....
My old office building was sold to a new landlord that rewrote my lease to put me on the hook for the 25 y/o hvac and raised my rent 3x my existing contract. I told him to piss up a rope and leased an office two doors down. Then he comes back and says my lease automatically renewed per the original contract and I was on the hook for two years worth of rent. This is a national commercial real estate holding company. I had my attorney send a strongly worded letter. They went down to six months, then four, three, a flat $1000 etc. Every time I basically told them to forcibly insert a pine cone into their asses. They wound up dropping it, signing a release forfeiting their right to litigate in the future and I ran them out of town after letting the other tenants know what they pulled. The building is still empty about two years later.
Most threats to pursue civil litigation are complete bs. Even if the litigator is sure to win. They probably would have made the guy fix the floors....
I can confirm that all homeowners aren't innocent victims being ripped off. Like I said in a previous post I own a plumbing and gas company been in business for about 20yrs. Here are a few tactics I have seen many owners try to pull over the yearsI'll just say this and you can do with it what you want. If you jump into waters in a start up construction business thinking the only predators are shady contractors and consumer homeowners and builders are the honest victims that you can trust, you're going to be eaten alive, fast, maybe not by the first customer (I did my first falling water water feature in the 80's and paid for everything out of my own pocket until the owner said this is bullshit, I'm going to go get you some money) but by the third or fourth.
The poor innocent customers, many of them, probably most of them, make their money to able to afford luxury items like Jaguars in their circular driveway and multi million dollar mansions with luxury pools by ripping people off or at least profiting off the weak, dumb or honest.
And some of them that can afford to pay will instead rip-off an honest, hardworking contractor just because he would feel like a failure, a sheep instead of a wolf, if he didn't rip them off while holding lavish drunken parties in a pool he won't pay for.
You're too kind. It's not that many realize how foolish they are is that they couldn't beat you down on the price and not pay you what they owed you. They were intending on trying when they hired you.I can confirm that all homeowners aren't innocent victims being ripped off. Like I said in a previous post I own a plumbing and gas company been in business for about 20yrs. Here are a few tactics I have seen many owners try to pull over the years
"Oh and since you are here would you mind looking at (insert any number of things) that had nothing to do with the original agreed upon work requested.
Agree on a price then after the job is complete they want to tell you......
"hey I talked to so and so they got a friend that said he would have done this for half of what you are trying to charge me"
I say well then why didn't you get this friend to do the job?
Answer is usually........
"oh he doesn't have a license and can't pull permits he does it on the side"
I say to them "so you want me to compete and matches prices for some guy doing it on the side who has no license, no business insurance and can't pull permits to do the job in the first place and most certainly wouldn't stand behind their work if something was to happen"
Usually after I word it like that they realize how foolish they are and write the check.
I gave you a thumbs up because it doesn't have a 'two thumbs up' button.Swimming pool buliding is a tough game. my draws were always 40/40/18/2. Usually by the end of the build the homeowner is pissed for a number of reasons and will decide to keep that last 2%. I was only too happy for them to "stick iT to me. Now they broke the contract and all warranty are null and void. Plus sure as shit they would call months later because something wasn't working right and they want someone to come out and look at it, Sure thing, im' just gonna need that last 2% first and ill come out to see what the problem is. If they go by an entire year and didn't use me to close their pool i will not go back out there because i don't know who closed my work and thus will no longer be responsible because they chose to go a craigslister or one poler to take care of the pool i built. All spelled out in black and white.
I also learned the longer you leave money out there the harder it becomes to collect. a month or two after the new pool owners have been using the pool they realize, its no longer magical and banging their old lady in the pool ls not like they watched in porn ........it is terrible btw lol and now they are staring the barrel of a rather financial obligation and now they get pissed..........LOl
as for the lady, she was not complaining about the workmanship, she stated she was waiting to see if she liked it or not. There is no clause for that. The contractor should learn by this and not so much money on the table. Especially in the world we live in today. For most a verbal agreement and handshake don't mean shit no more. Especiallity when everyones a victim today.
It's almost impossible to try and get decent help today. As the tired saying goes 'No one wants to work.'LOL, we could literally talk for weeks on end about the trials and tribulations of the pool world. Its extremely lucrative but you could also be out of business with one or two bad jobs. And lets not even get started on trying to find and retain good people let alone qualified pool people that arent on drugs, have valid licesnes, child support drama,theives, trying to set up their own company while working for yours, training your future compettion. lol. Yes the pool business is truly one of the worst ways to try and make it today. lol, its like a roach motel, once you get into the pool business there is no getting out....ever. LOL
Funny how that works. Some of my wealthiest customers became best friends from the pools I built for them and treated me as an equal, inviting me to their weddings, etc. One did a photo shoot showing me working to put on his family's website where he described me as an artist and my backhoe was my brush.I work in an affluent area. At my old business, mechanical and electrical yacht repair, my wealthiest customer was my best. Another wealthy customer, who inherited his money did not earn it, was one of the worst. Lawyers were usually pretty good about paying, but one was not. Crazy as it sounds, I rarely used a signed work order, it was all done by trust and honesty.
One of the few times I used a signed work order, I got burned. The customer, a podiatrist in San Francisco, stole my copy of the work order off my desk so I could not sue him.
This is the main reason I am downsizing and trying to get out of new construction. I just can't find the help to rough-in these 7+ bathroom high end custom homes anymore. I bought a Ford Transit 350 with the high roof and I have been transiting to mostly service, repair, smaller kitchen and bath renovations. I don't have all the headache of new construction don't have to wait as long for draws, mostly don't have to pull permits for these smaller jobs. I wish I had done it 20 yrs ago.t's almost impossible to try and get decent help today. As the tired saying goes 'No one wants to work.'
From the link and site pictures, this now seems to make a bit more sense. You know, for those of us with actual real world decision making prowess who aren't actual morons.
I'm guessing it went something like this:
Instead of fixing his shit fuck job -or- because he somehow felt insulted because he truly believed this was top tier work (LOL) the contractor RAAAAAGgGGGGGGGEEEEEDDDDD in chick's bathroom while playing Harvestor of Sorrows in his head the entire time
This is the main reason I am downsizing and trying to get out of new construction. I just can't find the help to rough-in these 7+ bathroom high end custom homes anymore. I bought a Ford Transit 350 with the high roof and I have been transiting to mostly service, repair, smaller kitchen and bath renovations. I don't have all the headache of new construction don't have to wait as long for draws, mostly don't have to pull permits for these smaller jobs. I wish I had done it 20 yrs ago.
My draws on new construction usually go like this.......
New contractor 10% to start, 70% after rough, remaining 30% after set-out. Unless the house is built on a slab then I would usually get a slab draw.
Running sewer and water was a separate charge from the main house. I charged per foot (50ft minimum) from house to sewer tap/water meter.
Overall I have worked with some pretty good GCs and for the most part haven't taken to big a bath.
Ha Ha I have had contractors call me the day before "Hey I need you to get all the faucets installed tomorrow they don't even have to be working or hooked up underneath I just need them in place so the guy from the bank can take pictures...LOLMy brother was in construction until he retired at 55. He has a 25-30 employee cleaning business on the side that he kept going (banks, medical offices, etc.) He was visiting one of his banking customers and the guy asked, "Hey, you were in construction, right?" My brother tells him 30 years so he hires him to do draw inspections.
He told me first time he arrives on site, if the contractor is there they usually approach him like WTH are you doing here. Once introductions are made they are best friends. He said you learn real quick which ones require close supervision.
"I knocked half off this pool so you could afford it, the cheapest I've ever done a pool, and in twenty two years of building pools I've never been talked to this way or had such an unappreciative, disrespectful customer. Who do you think you are? Who taught you your manners?"
Then she started screaming at her husband again and started crying. That was kind of a turn-on.![]()
Except for the fact he's on video screaming "Fuck you.....this is what you get!!!!!! Wharrrggaarrbbbllll arrrgghhhh!!!!!This has been WAY overthought. Easy answer to the "contractor's" problem is very simple.
It's a recall on the backer board that requires him to remove all the tile so he can replace the backer board.
Yup. Even though all contractors will deal with thieves and the mentally-ill if they're in business long enough, he screwed up.Except for the fact he's on video screaming "Fuck you.....this is what you get!!!!!! Wharrrggaarrbbbllll arrrgghhhh!!!!!