After paying Scott Koppenhafer 11 weeks in a row for a 9 week addition and renovation job, he accused us of "pre-planning" not to pay him during the 12th week and said he would stop our job unless we paid him the remainder of what we owed. We would have paid him that week also if he would have showed up at the job on the designated payment day or the two days following. Having not seen him to pay him the final weekly payment, we contacted him to find out what was going on. A couple of days later, he contacted us with the above accusation and threat not to continue the job. Having already paid him 93% of the contracted amount, we did not want to give him anymore funds until we saw the equivalent work done. At this point he said he would absolutely not continue the job without the rest of the money.
Upon speaking to him and asking him specifically if he was really comfortable walking away from a job where he was leaving us with no kitchen, no potable water on the first floor, unfinished electrical issues, a leaking roof, a sizable gap in the back corner of the house, no windows in the basement and no bilco door (just some plywood over the opening to the basement), no heating system since most of the duct work had been removed&he said he was okay with that. These were the urgent issues, not to mention the 6 page list of things that were left unfinished and were part of the original contract. This list included areas that he damaged in doing his work that he claimed would be taken care of by the end of the project.
After having our architect examine the home, other reputable contractors and our town building inspector; it was discovered that certain aspects of the job such as tile subflooring, blocking in critical support areas, lack of adequate electrical inspections, incorrect plumbing, and other destructive issues such as putting nails through pipes was discovered.
Not only did he not finish the job to the contract's specifications, but we've had to have work redone in order to protect our home and remodeling investment. So far we've spent an additional $35,000 to protect our home and get our kitchen up and running. We have yet to get a final total on how much it will cost us to finish the job, but it looks to be in the $100,000 plus range above what he quoted and was mostly paid. He claimed to have 30 years of experience in quoting jobs and obtaining building permits.
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