Bgt Construction

This review is the process of litigation. There is one fact correct in this statement, they did pay for the brick...material only not labor. The owner of the property, which is not the reviewer, was issued an invoice to pay the bricklayers and he stated that he had already paid for the brick. I explained that he had paid for the actual material and not the labor. He refused to pay. Our contract states that when an invoice goes unpaid, we have the right to give a 7 day notice to pay the outstanding invoice or we will suspend work until the outstanding balance is paid. The customer did not pay this invoice even after we presented copies of invoices he had received and paid and brick labor was not included in any payments. The project was in fact at approximately 78% and we had only drawn 76%. The customer had paid for the cabinets of approximately $4,000, but the brick labor was $5,200. The cabinet funds were used to offset the brick labor nonpayment. What the reviewer failed to mention on the time line was that the property was not zoned for the type of project they had requested. They had stated they had talked with the county and that it was within the zoning. I do not fault the customer in this because it has happened to us as well on other projects. We at our own expense and time, applied for a special use permit to the county, sent out all the notices required and presented it to the planning commission. A typical charge to handle this is $2,500, but we did it as part of our original contract. This is not a quick process. You have to post signs with the notice of zoning change along with mailing letters to other residence of the subdivision. Residents have 30 days to object before it can even be scheduled for the planning commission. This delay took us into the winter months and in the Middle Tennessee area, winters are cold and wet. Once we had the slab framed up, a county engineer put a stop work order stating we were too close to a stream. We immediately flagged the distances and were not within 15 feet of the stream. It took the engineer another 3 weeks to remove the stop work order. Approximately three months into construction, the sister of the owner was pressuring us for a completion date so she could turn in her notice to her apartment. We explained we would give her plenty of notice to do this, but she made her own decision to turn this notice in and had to move into the existing residence which had tension to say the least. During this same time frame, we were presented with a letter from a local attorney stating that the customer had paid over $50,000 for $10,000 worth of work. At this point of construction, the slab had been completed along with the framing, roofing, electrical, plumbing and HVAC rough-ins. The slab itself was $10,000. Again in the above review, these numbers are being exaggerated and not correct in the least. The homeowner had purchased several items such as appliances and failed to count this towards the amount left in construction. This customer has filed a $200,000 lawsuit on a $77,000 project. This only goes to show the disconnect between their position and reality. The have posted on several website that we were thieves with not description or details of the theft; because there are none. We in turn are in the process of defending our 20 year reputation with only 2 complaints in 20 years out of over 1,100 projects from small projects to projects valued at $2,000,000. Reviews are always welcomed so as long as they are truthful and accurate. In Tennessee the first party of a contract to breach can not claim equity when they denied equity. In this case, there was a material breach of contract when the brick labor was not paid, therefor, they were the first to materially breach the contract. Please feel free to contact us for any documentation that backs up our statements above and we will be glad to provide them to you. 615-810-2000.