Wheelocks Renovation and Painting

This review has been on hold only because we had to take this contractor to court due to not supplying our materials or finishing the project that he was contracted to do.

This man can really sell himself and sadly we were taken by him. He was hired to do the finishing work of our kitchen which included:
1. Applying a texture on the walls.
2. Prime and paint the walls and ceiling.
3. Provide and paint wood trim work around the windows, door and flooring.
4. Build and install a faux beam separating our kitchen and living area.
5. Provide and install our flooring.

When the time came for the contract to be signed he asked for over half in the payment for "the materials" and we gave it to him. That was in April and our job was scheduled to start the end of June. He had all that time to order not only our flooring, but the paint and the trim, etc. of which we now know he only bought the primer and the paint. Specific things that we were worried about, were not taken care of, namely nail oxidation from our ceiling. He was to use a special primer on that, and never did. We also asked him "when you start a job, do you stay on it" and "how long will this take"? His answers were yes and 3-4 days. We were on a time table so it was very important that this be done on schedule (of course we had a buffer for incidentals).

When the job was to start I called confirming the date and he said he was backed up a day and would be a day late. When he did show up he patched a few of the holes in the walls and said that the walls were in too bad of shape for "orange peel texture" and that he would need to contact his plasterer and let us know when he could come in and do the job. He then told us that it would be 2-3 weeks before his plasterer "might" be able to come out to our home. That was totally unacceptable. We ended up hiring our own plasterer to do the job right away so he could complete his part of the contract.

The first time he was on the job, we asked him about our flooring and he opted to tell us that Home Depot had sent our materials to another state. He said he was working with them and would let us know. Each time after that when we inquired about our flooring he told us a story about how he was working on it and how poorly Home Depot was in providing him answers about it. He refused to give us any information regarding the flooring order. In attempting to push to get our flooring in, we asked for information to call Home Depot and he refused to provide us with anything that could help. We later found out that he never ordered the flooring and ended up purchasing it ourselves.

He showed a total of 4 times to our home over a 3 week period which resulted in him priming the ceiling and walls and painting which was sub-par. We also had to wash the floors, counters and even our brand new cabinets because he refused to use a drop cloth or even mask off areas. Wish we could add pictures of the mess he left us. He said he would come back do the finishing touches of the paint work, which he never did. It took us 6 hours of our own time to fix all the mistakes he left behind. He also was going to sand texture spots in our ceiling so it looked uniform and never did that either. The last time that he was at our home, he said his employee who did the trim work was going to be there the next day and install everything, that all the trim was painted and ready to go. We never saw him or heard from the contractor again. The contractor never returned multiple calls, texts or emails.

After so many failed attempts to get him back to our house to finish the job, and many attempted at getting him to commit to an "end" date, we decided to end our relationship with him. We ended up contacting our local police department on advice of our lawyer to try to get our money back less the cost of the paint. He informed the officer that he would refund a portion of our down payment which never happened. After several attempts at resolving this situation, we ended up having to hire a lawyer and take him to court to finalize our dealings with him.

In essence, this contractor took our money and ran. Hind sight taught us many lessons on this job. In the end ... yes our kitchen is completed by the excellence of a master carpenter whom we wanted to hire in the first place, but time constraints didn't allow. Everything happens for a reason ...