Gorilla Construction

This is our experience with Gorilla Construction located at 2390 Hilltop Road in Presto Pa.

We met with George Zawilla, owner of Gorilla Contracting in February of 2023. We had met with him prior and created the plans for our addition. His plan sounded great and the agreed upon time period of 2-3 months was just what we were looking for. We signed the contracts in March, gave him a deposit in April, and expected our job to start in late April/ early May. He did in fact start on May 4 with excavating. This was the exact last time he met one of his deadlines.

In May, Gorilla Construction started removing dirt for our addition. When I say Gorilla Construction, what I really mean is his subcontractors as George does no work at all. He is really a project manager who is very light on project management. The dirt came out, the bricks for the foundation started to go up, and by the end of May it seemed like we would finish right on schedule. Then came June.

In June, next to nothing was done. If workers showed up, materials weren’t there. And if the materials showed up, the workers didn’t come. After about three weeks of maybe 1 day per week of work, we emailed and requested to meet about the lack of progress. George apologized profusely and said that after Covid, he had a hard time getting workers. We came up with a new schedule that would have the project done on or near September 30. He assured me that this schedule was good and he would have workers there everyday moving forward. The framing crew finally showed up and the roof went up within a week. Then ⅔ of the siding went up. As soon as that roof went up a request for a progress payment came from George. As this was in the contract, we sent it in to him right away. I believe this was August 7. And then, the work stopped again.

Throughout the months of August and the first two weeks of September, workers would show up sporadically, do some work that I could never quite see, and then leave after an hour or two. The most work that got done in those 4-5 weeks was the poor plumber who spent at least two days jackhammering out what the concrete workers had done in June so he could complete his work. By September 17 it was apparent that our September 30 finish date was not going to happen.

At this point, something had to change so we sent George an email stating that not only would we not give him any more money until project completion due to lack of production and broken promises, we were keeping 10% of the initial price to compensate for a 2-3 month job not being complete in 5 ½ months. The job was probably 50% done. Again George came to meet and said work would start and he would compensate us with a garage door for the delay and inconvenience. We immediately said no and that a garage door was not adequate compensation for the extreme delay.

We set up another meeting with George to come up with a new plan of action on Thursday October 12 at 5:00. George texted at 4:30 saying he would be late and did not know when he could come. I told him not to bother coming and that we were done working with him. As of October 17, we have paid approximately 64% for a project that is approximately 50% done. However, magically at the exact time we parted ways, we were, according to George, completely even and he was not refunding any money. I do have new contractors in and they immediately found things done incorrectly, poorly, and with low quality materials.

So, we are not telling you not to hire George Zawilla from Gorilla Construction. You could hire him and you could get your work done correctly and on schedule. You could also drink and drive and not get into an accident or get pulled over. But is it worth the risk?