Holland Builders of Cary, Illinois/Eric Loey is a builder who went over budget by nearly 50%, left the job unfinished, did poor quality workmanship, failed to install appliances correctly, and left a number of large problems that we ended up dealing with by having them redone at our own expense because he refused to fix them/uphold his guarantee.
He also uses inferior workmen who he fails to supervise properly, at least one of whom (the electrician) didn't speak English so Eric couldn't communicate with the man. Finally, he uses poor quality building materials. I should also add that he's got a few personality problems—he's slick and sure had me fooled.
Eric has manic tendencies as evidenced by his rapid-fire talk and disordered thought process on occasion, and he is not a good judge of his own talent and abilities.
Problems in adding on a 24 x 12 addition and remodelling our kitchen: Leaking roof, gutters that did not drain, poor quality workmanship installing exterior siding, a kitchen at 62 degrees due to poor insulation in the ceiling and floor, improper installation of the ductwork for our range hood so it never worked properly, a patio door that was installed improperly and never closed right (the instructions were right there, but the installer refused to read them!),
Lousy workmanship on the foundation and exterior brick work, excessive cracking of interior walls, failure to finish the oak floor as well as other things not done such as painting the heating ducts, faulty installation of cooktop, inability to budget properly leaving us to pay $105,000 and not the approximate $65,000 estimate he gave us for his work. Failure to install an access route to the attic after we made it clear we wanted that, and poor quality installation of kitchen cupboards. There are too many things that went wrong to list.
He used the cheapest building materials he could get even though the materials my spouse and I were responsible for paying for were rather high-end (cupboards, appliances, granite, and windows and patio door). When the job was "finished" he had the nerve to tell me that we'd picked some really nice and expensive quality items for the kitchen—like he'd never worked on a project that demanded any excellence on his part before.
The job took nearly one year. This was about 6 months longer than he told us it would take.
One of his worst qualities was his intellectual smugness (I have to say that he IS quick intellectually, but that doesn't make up for his lack of experience and his immaturity in thinking how qualified he was to take on this or any building project without more experience!!!) He really overestimates his own worth as a high quality builder. He is just too inexperienced and has too cloistered a background to know his own limitations.
After the job was "done, " he refused to honor his guarantee and flatly denied anything could be or would ever be wrong with his work—this in the face of a kitchen whose temperature fell to 62 degrees once autumn set in.
Rather than look for the problem, he told us our thermometer must be off and brought his own the next morning (SURELY we were exaggerating how cold it was or trying to fool him, paranoid idiot!!!) and then proceeded to tell us, in light of his measuring the temp at 62 degrees also with his thermometer, that we must need a larger furnace, that our new one wasn't adequate to heat the house after the addition was put on—this after his heating guys told us it was more than adequate for the job!!! The problem was that the heat was being sucked out into the attic by these canned lights in the ceiling which his insullation guy failed to insullate to prevent this heat loss.
He was full of excuses the whole way through this job... SO quick to have a ready excuse as to why this couldn't be done or why it didn't make sense to do something differently when clearly it would have been better.
He was so full of excuses, in fact, that after nearly a year of him we couldn't stand the sight of the guy. After trying to get him to address the first problem which he denied was a problem (a freezing kitchen), we gave in to our frustration and paid others to have the rest of the problems addressed. (Remeber: we'd been dealing with him over building related issues for nearly a year, so it's not like we didn't know what to expect.) It was all I could do to keep my husband from wasting the guy financially in court—it would have been so easy!!! But some things, in my book, are better left alone and exacting revenge on this goof was one of them. I just wanted to move on with our lives. What a punk. I can only hope he's grown up some since.
Needless to say, I wouldn't recommend this guy even for a small job. He is too unsophisticated and is a cheat (though purports to be a born again Christian!) with an ego so big it's blinded him to his own inadequacies. God forbid anyone buy the house he's building.
Hope this help others avoid Holland Builders and Eric Loey.
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