Bens Better Construction

We hired Ben’s Better Construction and Landscaping after reading reviews and receiving a recommendation from a neighbor at the end of February 2021. It is November 2021 now and BBCL is still not done. After high hopes and lots of talk from the owner, Ben Stokes, we felt comfortable at the beginning. Then work failed.

Ben told us his company performed water damage remediation and could do what we were about to hire ServiceMaster to do. We found out from the BBCL staff that they never done water damaged homes before. In fact, they were going to training for it the following week. After the initial flood cuts from floor to half way up the wall and removal of walls from four broken pipes, BBCL sealed off the rooms to dry out. When it was opened one month later we realized BBCL never cut out the ceiling where the pipes broke. Now we had a mold problem. BBCL said they would take care of it. They brought in Clorox bleach and sprayed down the boards. They did not wipe the boards down. We hired another company to come (Mr. Restore) who disinfected properly and hired a crew to box everything up and seal up the cabinets. Up to this point nothing was taken down, boxed up, or protected. They failed to tell us they have a felon working for them. He stole from us as well!

We asked BBCL to hire movers and have the damaged rooms packed up and moved out to a climate control facility. They did it themselves. Even our insurance company asked why. They were willing to pay to have our home packed and stored. BBCL did not put up and plastic wrap, cover furniture or pack up any of our items. BBCL assured us they would order PODs to store our house in. They never called or made arrangements. Our family was living with three pets and three adults in one hotel room while no work was being completed on our home. By the end of April, I ordered a POD for the contractors to pack our items in. The contractors managed to break furniture while loading the PODin front of me. The remaining downstairs furniture and items were left in random places in our three car garage. We could no longer use the garage for cars. In this process, we found a broken lamp with glass shards on the garage floor. When confronted, no one would confess to the event. This happened several items from Iced Tea Maker to toilet bowl brush holder.

BBCL unplugged our wine fridge and left it in the sun and ruined the wine. It registered 95 degrees based in the thermometer inside the fridge. They refused to pay for the damaged wine unless they got to take it home. Its all ruined so they can take it. We still have not been paid for it. They have lost our concert grand piano. They managed to damage several parts of the wood on the piano in the middle of May when they used a jackhammer on our flooring around the piano. BBCL used our sheets to wrap it up and then continued work. Finally they hired someone to repair and store it. They cannot remember who they hired to take it. Luckily we took tons of pictures of all of these events and time stamped everything. We have approximately $9000 in damage to furniture which we have asked to file a claim through their insurance. They told us to file it through our insurance as it was damaged by them while working at our home. We still have not seen a dime for damages.

While we were working with our insurance we were required to buy all the plywood, sub flooring, carpet, hardwood, and the paint for the job. We hired contractors to do our carpeting. They subcontracted out the wood flooring that was installed in June. Painting was done in May. Then they stopped coming. We told BBCL we were moving back in at end of September. We believed this was plenty of time to finish the job. By August 31 they managed to make the master bedroom and bathroom livable but nothing else. It is now November and it’s still not done. We never know until the morning of sometimes if they are coming to work. We gave them until November 10 to finish everything. But when we found they took towels from our linen closet to clean up their grout and caulking, we fired BBCL. We have had enough. We have so much dust, dirt, and paint stains even after having it professionally clean twice because they did not clean up after working. Our brand new floors are scraped up and need repaired. We have to hire someone to complete the stairs that they have damaged. We still have not found our grand piano after multiple requests and asking for it to be delivered.

The workmanship has been shoddy. We had their plumber out three times to fix the same problem. The electrician is not a certified electrician. I ended up in the ER from tripping over a caulking tube they left randomly sitting out. They used cheap, grainy plywood to replace the thick pine baseboards we once had. After four coats of paint you can still see the grain and it feels rough. They sprayed orange peel texture over a custom valance and a Hunter Douglass Window silhouette blind coveri