We have gone through several renovations with our home that has been a fixer upper nightmare. The first two major phases were done with a pricey but organized and professional general contractor. To save money on the next phase we were going to find another contractor now that we knew more and needed to save money. We have a friend whose husband is a contractor and asked him about the work and he said yes.
We walked contractor and his wife (friend) around the house listing details of project. We walked them around the house and discussed details of project and cost ($80 k for top floor and if they would/could do another bathroom on our first floor we could do $100k all in ), how we would do as much as we could ourselves to lower cost and timeline of June 1st.
They provided a vague but what we though was a great priced estimate of $46 k with some parts listed as TBD due to not knowing what some stuff might be once we open walls and we didn’t have all our flooring and bathroom materials picked out (we knew with having an old house we might have to be flexible once we knew what we had to work with).
Off the original contract we assumed we saved about $10k off that quote by doing some work ourselves and cutting some other costs, not permitting and paying in cash…. They save on their taxes and paychecks they said with taking cash.
Well this project was a shitshow to say the least as the contractor was super disorganized . Often having to leave for material, never finishing things he said he would that day, having to discuss details over and over and this should have been huge red flags for us but we thought they were friends and Saving money so no big deal.
Long story short the last major budget update was end of May and all that work was left was bathroom tile, wood flooring install light fixtures and bathroom fixtures, trim (doors and windows) and install doors. Which at the end of May was supposed to be done then no later than like 2 weeks…. We thought no big deal as we paid for 90% of those materials out of our own pocket so we felt good where we were at for the project ( we had covered the $46 k + $11k for drywall already and paid another $10k work done)
They worked until July 1st and handed us a bill for $48 k MORE?!? They now say they never knew about our budget and it’s our fault the cost are so high?!!
We literally don’t have this money … we took a loan for 80k . We just had a baby so we are on leave from work . What do we do?!
I feel if we went to court everything would be what we say vs them. We have a long list of things they told us to do and then bam ends up being super expensive, we talked prices, we talked cutting corners, we did so much work ourselves while I was in my 3rd trimester to save money. We feel it was very obvious we were cutting costs and tight on budget the whole way, I made a big deal having to find new flooring that was $1 more a square foot. I painted my whole upstairs at 40 weeks pregnant. Anytime asked about things we did add and typically more $, they would say oh it’s not that much or it’s no big deal… we feel completely bamboozled and idiots for not doing things differently bc we thought we could trust these people.
Location: WA state
Comments
No written, signed contract? It’s not unusual for contractors to do this – especially to elderly people. Write them a check for what you agreed on. Worst case, they sue (and then when there’s no written contract provided, all bets are off you’ll be fine). Best case, they take it and are no longer a friend. Let this be a life lesson to get everything in writing
Does anyone else think there’s more to the story here
I also learned the hard way not to hire contractor/friends. After finding out his version of mid grade was my version of shitass windows. I got home and had windows rated for Texas installed while located in the frozen tundra.
This sounds like the contractor just doesn’t want to finish the project.