To make a long story short, stay away from Yankee Construction (Brett Elam) in Council Bluffs/Omaha area. Read the rest if you like bad contractor stories.
Where do I begin, it started when we picked out the plan for a new house. He stated that he didn't have a set of plans so we paid him in advance to purchase them. The plans he provided were a poor copy and imcomplete. Asked him repeatedly for an original set to which he stated that it was a complete set... Only received 3 of 6 pages (stated on blueprints). He also stated that we would be given credit for the money paid in advance for the blueprints.
He would not provide change orders for anything we upgraded although we asked and his contract stated that he would.
He quoted us prices for upgrades then billed us nearly double what we were quoted. One charge was listed as "extra-sanding" on kitchen cabinets. I watched them tape off the cabinets drawers and clear coat them straight off the delivery truck.
When it came time to frame he decided he was going to do it himself, there were too many framing mistakes to even mention here, walls noticebly not square, etc.
We sub-contracted the electrical and garage doors ourselves and had an agreement on that price. After work was completed he stated that his sub-contractors were going to perform it for a $1000 dollars less.
Subfloor swelled at seams a substantial amount. I asked Brett several times to sand the seams down because it was obvious that you would feel this through the carpet. He suggested a thicker carpet pad. The day before the carpet was to be installed he said that he told the carpet installers to fix and level the floors before installing the carpet. The day the carpet installers were installing the carpet I stopped in at lunch. The minute I walked through the door I was appalled at what I saw. The carpet pad was down and you could see every seam of the subflooring through the carpet pad. I immediately called the installers and asked them not to come back, that the floor had to be fixed first. Brett then called me back and told me that I had no right to talk to the sub-contractors and tell them to stop work. He met me at the house later that night and promised to fix the bad areas that we could feel through the pad. Needless to say he didn't. I am also a little upset with Kelly's Carpet of Council Bluffs, I had asked them to send out an installer prior to installing the carpet to look at the condition of the subfloor. They stated that they would but never did.
There are numerous things he didn't finish, failed to fix, and completly denied responsibility for doing. I have entire walls where you can see every drywall nails and tape seam.
Later I found that Brett Elam (Yankee Construction) was not even legally registered as a contractor in the state of Iowa and legally he should not have been building. I turned him over to the Iowa Workforce Development who fined him and made him register.
On top of all this, he took us to small claims court in Iowa. You can have a lawyer represent you, but with the overwhelming evidence I had, there should have been no way we could lose this. That was even a bigger joke, the judge failed to look at any evidence of payments we provided, nor did he look at any of the 40 some pictures, we proved that Brett lied about purchasing the blueprints from the architectual firm, and he violated almost line item of his contract.
Unbelievably he won, I appealed the courts decision, stating that the first judge did not add up payments we had made to Brett. I listed all payments and the exhibit numbers from the first court proceeding trying to make it easier for the second judge. He apparently did not even look at any evidence and sent his judgement the minute he walked out of the courtroom, upholding the first judges decision.in Council Bluffs it's apparent that incompetency is a good character for Judges. Unfortuneately I could not find a single laywer willing to take on a small claims case. Just not enough money in it for them.
I know we made a lot of mistakes while building this house. Definetly get everything in writing, if the builder promises anything get it in writing. Have no work performed without a change order and price agreed upon in that change order. We had looked at several other houses he had built, apparently he did very little work himself. Since then I have heard from lawyers we talked to about this case that he has a bad reputation and that he has had a lot of problems with other people in the community.
Needless to say, we have discussed selling because I hate coming home to this.
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