Before I met my wife, I had issues with contractors working on my past homes, and thought it was just par for the course.
My wife and I went through what we started calling “contractor hell” for over a 3 year period.
After being together for 4 years, my wife and I bought a home with our 2 daughters that needed some work. It was a bit older, but I knew we could turn it into our dream home.
We had terrible experiences with many of the contractors. Some wouldn’t even respond to our inquiry and many were late or no-showed to our house, to provide a quote. It’s crazy, they didn’t even give themselves the chance to earn our business!
If they were lucky enough to have us hire them, it typically ended in an argument with me trying to get them to fix things they damaged or completely broke. Some of the contractors even denied the damages when it was blatantly obvious!
I’ll reveal how you can avoid most of this pitfalls that created nightmares for me and my family. You’ll need to know what happened to me before we get to that…
We hired a contractor before we moved into the house to fix items on the inspection.
It was a nightmare.
When the contractor went to fix a plug in the kitchen, they fried my dishwasher electronics board and my disposal. They fought me on it of course and said it wasn’t them. The stress of having someone deny something so blatant is extremely frustrating. Especially when you need those items like a disposal and dishwasher.
I had to pay a lot of money to get those things fixed because they said it wasn’t their fault which it obviously was. This same contractor did a small section of roof where the chimney is located. It is called a cricket and it separates rain water on both sides of the chimney. They messed that up and I had to have a roofer come out. Maybe it’s my fault not getting a roofer, but my realtor referred them and the contractor said all of these things were easy. I wasted $1500 just on that part of the project because it had to be redone!!!
The stress of having 2 kids and my wife while your roof is leaking is beyond words. I’m getting frustrated as I type this. We had buckets and towels all over the place. I rushed to Ace Hardware to get a tall latter and shop vac to try and suck the water out as fast as possible.
The moral of the story on that experience is don’t hire a general contractor to do roofing, electrical etc. You want to work with a company that specializes in exactly what you need done. Phoenix Home Remodeling specializes in
Kitchen and bathroom remodels, and we have perfected the process.
So, 2 years later we hired a roofing company to replace our whole roof. This was another contractor nightmare.
They had a lot of crew members that did not care about our house. They left their cigarette butts and garbage all around my house. At the time my kids were 3 and 5 and I didn’t want them touching or potentially eating cigarette butts.
They also cracked my basketball rim which you could tell was from something small like a nail hitting it but they wouldn’t admit it!! The backboard was only 7 months old and was in perfect shape before they showed up.
The sales person came out to try and convince me otherwise but after I showed him how strong the glass was and there was an exact spot that was hit, he said maybe it was potentially from them. They weren’t willing to do anything about it of course.
Then they tripped a fuse on my breaker box and didn’t tell me. Guess where that went to?
The freezer in my garage that had $200-$300 of frozen food from Costco!
It was packed. The roofing staff tripped the breaker and never told me!
So the next day when we went to get something out of the freezer it was all 100+ degrees! The contractor sales person and the owner and I went back and forth over text messages and phone calls and they finally said they would take $200 off the total roof bill.
They left blue marks all over my driveway from the trailer. The sales person said, don’t worry it will go away. After 4 months it was still there, so I got a concrete cleaning solution and had to scrub my driveway with a bristle brush. Not fun.
The roofers also left cement mortar piles that dropped over my hose and several other places around my house. It’s not so easy to remove once cement hardens!
I also complained to them that there were nails all over the place and they said they would clean it up. I found over 15 nails that they didn’t pick up which is a concern when you have a 3 and 5 yr old. We bought the house so they could run around the back yard in a safe confined space.
Pro tip: If you are going to hire a contractor of any sorts, you want to make sure you make it clear to them that keeping everything clean is very important to you. I did not tell the roofing company that until the garbage and other stuff was all over the place. Let them now it is a serious thing so if it starts to happen you can remind them that they agreed to keep everything clean.
At Phoenix Home Remodeling, we use plastic runners for all carpet areas and we block off the construction area to keep things clean.
So not too long after that we hired a company to spray the attic to seal the house from the outside and save money on our energy bill.
Luckily, they didn’t cause me to have to spend more money but the time and stress was horrific.
The workers didn’t care about my house. There was scrapes and scratches on my walls from their hoses and tools.
They had to come back 4 separate times because they did such a bad job!
I had to start going into the attic and checking their work. I had bruises all over my chest and forearms from crawling through the rafters to spray paint the spots they missed so they wouldn’t miss the holes again.
If there are holes it lets the hot air in and make the entire process pointless. Of course the owner tried to argue that it didn’t matter until I explained the articles I read about it and he then said ok.
Every time they came back, we had to get the kids and my wife out of the house because the fumes are dangerous. We couldn’t spend the night each time they sprayed and it’s hard to sleep somewhere else with kids, especially when they have school the next morning.
The second time they sprayed I made the mistake of forgetting to look through a specific area of the attic. The third time they came to spray they left before I could check everything out!
So… I spent a lot of time checking everywhere in the attic and found a lot of sections which I spray painted.
When I was walking back to get out I fell halfway through the ceiling up to my chest level. My legs were dangling and I was holding on by my upper arms on the wood rafter!
Thank got my kids or wife weren’t underneath me because several big chunks of drywall came crashing down.
Needless to say, our experience with the contractor was terrible.
That’s just a few of the contractor nightmares we had in the first 3 years of owning that home. There’s more but in the interest of time…
I can’t tell you how much stress these contractors gave me throughout the whole process. It effected my wife and even threatened the safety of my children multiple times.
Most of the contractors and their employees did not respect our home or our family and it caused an extreme amount of stress, time and our money.
WHAT I LEARNED…
Coming from a technology job background I noticed most of the contractors had bad processes. Many barely used any type of system to keep them organized; and most of their employees didn’t have a “code of ethics” or company culture to guide them.
As many people have probably thought to themselves, these issues made me often say to myself “If that was my business I would…”
That statement occasionally floated in in the back of my mind, but I went on with my life.
After many months I had a chat with my Director, Ben at the Tech company where we worked. Ben had a lot of employees under him and he was liked and respected. He was known for having great leadership skills and people did their job well because of their adoration for him.
He and I were talking about how often contractors mess things up and they can be very difficult to work with. Ben brought up that he was interested in starting a remodeling company. He told me how he was trying to convince his brother Mark to move to Arizona to start the business. Mark had been a contractor for 10+ years in the Chicago area. We realized that we had a lot in common and decided I would consult for them if Mark moved to Phoenix.
Ben eventually convinced Mark to move to Phoenix to start up the business. They both were very excited to get things started as they had been talking about doing this for many years. They had both grown up doing this type of work with their father and always said they should start their own business. They had worked on many projects and they paired well together.
We spent a lot of time together once Mark made the move. They presented all the moving parts involved in running a contractor/remodeling business. I found several ways to improve the processes and reduce costs that could be passed on to his customers. We spent a lot of time discussing a plan for the business and we worked well together.
Ben then suggested that the 3 of us partner together, which I was reluctant.
I already owned a small business on the side while being employed at our tech firm. I really liked the idea of helping people get an awesome remodel, but the time involved especially with 2 kids was intimidating.
A few months later, Ben made me realize we had the right components for the business and how it would be fun and rewarding to see the before and afters of the renovation. That got me very excited!
Ben essentially pointed out that we had the dream team:
Mark and his skilled crew do the renovations, Ben works with customers and employees and I handle the processes and logistics. The three of us together completed the puzzle so now we have the best of both worlds:
A team of highly skilled contractors to provide beautiful remodels and the processes in place to keep us organized and reduce the costs to pass on to our clients.
That is why I decided to have an amazingly well-run kitchen and bath remodeling company in Phoenix and around the valley!
Unfortunately, homeowners often go through nightmares with some contractors and there’s no need for that. The only reason there should be a surprise is if something’s hiding in the house that the contractor obviously can’t see. We don’t have Superman’s X-ray vision!
Homeowners should not get several bad surprises like cost increases, workers not showing up, projects taking longer than it should or workers not respecting your home.
I don't want anyone to have to go through the stress and issues my family and I went through
Phoenix Home Remodeling was formed to provide excellent customer service through amazing remodels and an efficient process so homeowners don’t have to deal with those issues.
We are here to provide your dream living space and make it an enjoyable remodel!
