Kraus Bros Landscaping & Remodeling

I cannot Caution/Warn you enough about our experience with John Horsch/Kraus Bros Construction. John Horsch, the owner of Kraus Bros. Construction comes across like a very nice, honest small businessman and that is why we chose to hire him. Unfortunately that was not our experience at all and once he got our money he no longer appeared to care about a timeline or our project. We hired John Horsch on Sept 4th 2018 to remodel our basement with a projected completion date of Dec 15th 2018. This was very important to us as we had someone coming to live with us in January 2019 and needed to have it done. John was well aware of this fact. In June 2019, almost 6 months after our projected completion date and with the project still incomplete we were forced to hire an attorney and fire Kraus Bros. Construction. At this point we had paid for 90% (Jan 2019) of the project and we still only had plumbing, electric and walls. He knew we had a tight timeline but it didn’t look to us like he had any intentions of hitting it as 8 months into a 3 month project he hadn’t even ordered the doors, windows and hadn’t contracted subs for some of the work and attempted to try and get out of the contract.

To make matters worse we learned that John also wasn’t paying some of the sub contractors who had been working on our house. The plumber and electrician were NOT paid during our project. We had to make arrangements to pay the plumber directly for the remainder of the work and the electrician chose not to finish the job since he hadn’t been paid – this despite the fact that we had already paid Kraus Bros for their work once. He also refused to pay the final half of the flooring payment after we had paid it to him in full. We were forced to purchase the carpet again so the company would release it to us.

The LVT flooring which Kraus Bros. had installed needed to be removed because it was put in improperly and again we had to pay twice for our flooring. John Horsch promised to reimburse us for the flooring but he never did.

When we asked for the names and contact information of the subcontractors John Horsch refused to provide them to us. We were able to get the plumbers and electricians contact information through the permits they pulled for our project. We were fortunate that none of them put liens on our house but they could have. You may not be so lucky.

The more we questioned why things weren’t getting done the more he delayed the project. He also started to charge us for things that he never said we were going to be charged for. Per his contract, changes and upgrades are to be paid for in advance. Fed up and frustrated in May 2019 (nearly 5 months after the projected completion date) we filed a complaint with the BBB thinking this might light a fire under John to get the job done. It had the opposite effect. After filing the complaint with the BBB he demanded payment for more “upgrades” some of which we never requested, had already been paid for or were things he asked us if we wanted but would have refused had he told us that there was a charge or a delay associated with his suggestion. He refused to come back until we paid these new charges that were never agreed upon in advance.

When John said that he was not coming back unless we paid those change fees we contacted a lawyer who believed the contract had been breached and he sent John a letter that we hired someone else to finish the project. We requested the money for our upgrades that we had paid for and were never delivered. John Horsch of Kraus Bros never returned the money and sued us for what he thought was the remainder of the contract. This was fascinating because he sued us for $3140 while having kept $10,000 of our money in upgrades alone and was refusing to finish the project. John Horsch agreed through mediation to pay us $20,000. He also attempted to have a gag order preventing us from talking or posting about our experience with him and his company. We refused.

There are other issues that we left out because we can’t fit everything into our review. All of the above information is backed by emails, texts and other written documentation. John may come back and say there was miscommunication on product but that isn’t factual. We were clear from day 1 on what we wanted and there are only so many times that we could repeat ourselves before we realize it isn’t about the product.

I wouldn’t hire Kraus Bros. or John Horsch to build a doghouse, much less allow him in my home again. Because of company name changes we later found out he has an F rating on Angie’s List. Again I cannot Caution/Warn you enough about our experience with John Horsch/Kraus Bros Construction. I would not recommend them.