To recap where we left off; The contractor had done crap work and was saying he couldn’t come back out to fix or do anything because he had COVID.
Two weeks later I followed up with him to see how he was feeling, he said much better and I asked when he would be back out, he said that one of his employees had COVID and he would have to be quarantined for another two weeks. Mind you at this point we were over two months living in the house with no use of our “finished” basement. Which means kids were sleeping in random places, boxes were unpacked, and we were getting irritated.
I started to investigate this guy because I had a strange gut feeling about the entire situation. I made a few calls, talked to a few people and though legally I can’t disclose everything, my husband and I determined that maybe him having “COVID” was a blessing in disguise. We spoke with our attorney and explained that we were left with unlivable circumstances and asked if we could hire a different contractor due to COVID to fulfill the rest of the contract. When we reached out to this scum bag contractor to let him know, he started to back pedal and defensively question or decision. So, I point blank asked him where the money was that he took from escrow to “buy supplies” and I asked him for receipts. He changed his number, moved, abandoned his LLC, and unfriended everyone form the well know real estate company on every social medial outlet. Come to find out, we are not the first people he has screwed over.
We had several people come in and give us a quote to finish what was left behind. So many people told us that he was doing all the wrong things inside to repair our basement. Many of the quotes came back leaving use to pay out of pocket upwards of $15 thousand for the work to be done. I have to say, I am lucky enough to work in the construction field and know several commercial and residential contractors locally. A friend of ours along with his brother-in-law finished up the flooring in the basement and installed all the interior doors that needed to be replaced, along with a punch list of items the other guy never finished all within budget. We did a mild test which came back negative saving us a crap ton of money not having to replace all the dry wall, we did have to replace a few sections that were damaged due to water. We hired Window World to replace the sliding glass door and windows which were ruined. This helped us to finance the remaining that was no longer in escrow to cover the cost that the original contractor pocketed.
All of this took several weeks to finish and even so, our basement was finally complete as of October 1, 2020! We are all moved in and unpacked. I wouldn’t say we are settled in by any means, but we are on our way. We learned that you shouldn’t trust people, period. This guy gave me a fake license number with a fake company name. When I searched him, he checked out. He was super friendly at first and his crew was very knowledgeable. All of which was deceiving. Everything happens for a reason, I am not sure why we went through such trial and tribulation for this property, but we do love this land and we love calling this home. We hope to have all of this behind us and we believe that KARMA will take her course.
Rye Family Farm 