WWYD Contractor work quality sucks

[picksthemusic]

I'll try to keep this as brief as possible (lol it's still very long).

Roughly 7/2022 we notice a water leak coming from our ensuite shower causing discoloration in our ceiling below it in the family room. We call a water mitigation company to come out and look and they determine our shower drain is leaking. We do a water damage claim with our homeowner's insurance and set things up with them as well. They rip out the shower down to the subflooring to allow the area to dry and prevent mold, leaving the tub. Keep in mind our home was built ~1997 and has a custom shower/tub combo installed (this becomes important later). The same water mitigation company says they will be hiring the contractor (they have a list of companies they work with) to do the reconstruction. The reconstruction contractor attempts to find a comparable shower setup to replace what they ripped out, but are unsuccessful due to the size/shape/glass enclosure. They go back to the insurance who authorizes them to rip out the tub as well. Again, they attempt to find a comparable shower/tub combo to replace what they took out. Also during this, we ask the contractor to do the rest of the bathroom, since we're already getting one half done, we might as well do the rest. This means floor, vanities (cabinets/sinks/mirrors/lights), toilet room, paint.

They find one in Canada, and order it. When it finally (this took like 2 months) arrives, they realize when they place the shower pan that it is several inches too small for the space it needs to occupy. We're not sure how this happened, but the suspicion is no one bothered to convert from Imperial to Metric. Not our fault, of course, so we thought the mitigation company was going to cover the costs of returning it to the Canadian company. This, again, takes months and $$$ (it's unclear at this point who paid for this part) because shipping costs and restocking fees. Meanwhile, we're back at square one with the shower/tub and decide to have the contractor build a 3/4 wall to enclose the shower, and we'll tile the whole thing, and get a free-standing tub to fit in the space next to it. It's excruciatingly slow work because the contractor keeps asking us to purchase things off of Amazon (like the shower fixtures, etc.) and we're like no thanks, we'll get them from a showroom/reputable retailer since we don't want crap that will break in a year.

Long story short, the work took forever (like 2 years, no joke), the contractor was incredibly difficult to work with due to lots of no-call/no-shows, promises made and not kept, and we had to stay on them constantly, which was incredibly exhausting. We tried leaving a lot of the communication up to the mitigation folks since they hired them, but that wasn't possible with a lot of it since we were also using them for the complete bathroom, not just the shower/tub fix. Eventually the work was done in April of this year and we thought that was the end of it.

Well, once that job was done, we had a sewer line backup under the house and the downstairs toilet overflowed, and caused a whole other project which took 5 months (much more reasonable in our minds, and we used a totally different company than before due to those issues we had). Once again, once that job was done and we thought we were in the clear, I took a bath in my new tub for the second time (!!) and DH noticed water leaking into the ceiling below (this time in the eating area of the kitchen, which is a few feet away from where the shower stain was).

We tried contacting the old contractor that installed the tub/shower, and he said it's part of their warranty, let's get it figured out. We said okay, when can you come, and it was more of the song and dance we received before, putting us off and going to other jobs instead of ours, etc. We gave them three tries. Then we called the old water mitigation company because they hired them, and it was part of the insurance claim. We also let the insurance know, but did not open a claim yet (this time it would be a faulty workmanship claim). The mitigation folks say they will for sure take care of it, no problem, it's under warranty. It takes them weeks to get to us because they kept forgetting about us, but they finally sent a guy and a plumber out, and they agree that yes, water is leaking. No shit. So the plumber is like take more baths so the water areas show up better, and so I did. And sure enough, there was more water in the ceiling.

And now the old stain from the shower is showing up again, so we're basically thinking that the original leak never got fixed and we're back to freaking square one again. And now they're trying to backtrack saying that since we had the contractor do more work on our bathroom than just the leak stuff and we paid him more than the insurance money that they don't know if they can help us.

This has been a nightmare for over 2 years and I just want this to be over. I sent all correspondence between myself, the contractor, and their billing team back to them so they can figure out what happened on their end (I'm thinking some creative accounting), and have yet to get back to me. I'll be shocked if anything gets done before the new year.

What would you all do?

[tacokick]

Oct 31, 2024 16:09:39 GMT -5 picksthemusic said:

And now they're trying to backtrack saying that since we had the contractor do more work on our bathroom than just the leak stuff and we paid him more than the insurance money that they don't know if they can help us.

All of this is horrific and I’m sorry you have to deal with it!

This part makes zero sense. They clearly did something wrong and it shouldn’t matter if you had more done. Faulty work or materials is faulty and it sounds like they never fixed what was covered by insurance and why you hired them in the first place. I would push that hard but I don’t know how responsive they will be.

[livinitup]

My MIL did a lot of contract work in her lifetime - moving and building a few homes (15) and for the past 20 years I’ve watched her do major renovations on her home by us. I always thought she was a bit MUCH and really mean and demanding with every. little. thing. (She did pay bills her bills, respectably).

Then I had some stuff done at our house and I thought I was tough. Haha, no way.

You HAVE TO BE INSANELY DEMANDING to just get what you deserve. My MIL was right all along. Really, really right.

BE RELENTLESSLY DEMANDING. That’s my advice.

[babsbunny]

I am so so sooooooooo sorry. I just spent 9k for work I think is worth 6k for a single shower over one month and DH and I are exhausted (though I did *ALL* the coordinating). I agree with @livinitup that you are stuck with having to waste your time and energy in staying on top of things. Text and call everyday. Be calm, be clear, and save all communications.

And here DH and I were feeling bad when a contractor was 5 hours late. You have all my sympathy.

[katieb4tom]

We fired a contractor that was doing similar things and are in the process of hiring a new one to complete the work. As the new ones go through the house to provide their estimates, both have found additional issues caused by the previous contractor. Both new ones have said 80% of their work these days is fixing what bad contractors have done. Apparently, regulations in your state can really affect who is allowed to practice and this leads to a lot of people hanging a shingle who shouldn’t, and then changing their business name when issues arise. It has been expensive and exhausting for us as well, but honestly, we wouldn’t trust the old one to come back because the quality of his work was so poor, we cannot trust him on the things we cannot see (plumbing and electrical.) My advice is to cut your losses, remove the stress, and get someone new and trustworthy in there to do it right.

[simpsongal]

It may be time to consult an attorney.

I think it's especially galling to have these problems when you're using insurance money to fix a problem - you usually end up paying more (in part, b/c contractor knows deep pockets are footing the bill) but you can usually ensure boxes are getting properly checked, etc. Was the new work inspected by the county?