We hired Bill Scanlon for a renovation that began in September. He agreed to build a shell, which we would then finish. This should have taken a couple of months.
He showed up in September and started the job. He didn't appear every day at 7 or 8 am like he did initially. Sometimes he didn't show up until after 10 or 11 am.
In December the weather got snowy and he took time off for Christmas. I was fine with that. Then he didn't show up in January when the weather cleared. We spoke on the phone and we were assured he would return "next week".
This went on for 8 months. I sat near his driveway every day for 4 hours, thinking I'd catch someone going home at some point. I actually caught him a few times, spoke to him and was assured he would appear at my home to finish the job he was hired to do only to wait some more.
He was to erect a "Knee-Wall" over the original part of the house, which was all of 19' x 23'. We wanted higher ceilings on the ground floor. This turned out to be hazardous and the building department demanded reinforcement. Eventually when he returned, he complied.
Meanwhile, the reason we wanted to renovate is because the house was a mold-trap. I made it very clear I wanted to free the house of the entire mold problem.
The local tomcat used an open extension, our future dining room, as a love nest. You don't want to know what that smelled like when it was closed in. I washed it with bleach, ammonia, a combination of both, and various brands of disinfectant, not necessarily in that order. Finally. I had to sand the fiberboard on the dining room floor and finish it with acrylic to get rid of the smell. Fortunately, my efforts were rewarded.
When he disappeared in December of he left a gaping hole in the second floor and the attic areas. All the wood he installed became moldy over the months. As I tore out the drywall originally installed in the house, I found black fuzzy mold behind it adhered to the wood. No big surprise. But when I finally made it up to the second floor, after Scanlon returned briefly, to install stairs, before he finished the roof and soffits, I found the same black fuzzy mold on the new construction. I was appalled. Also, he did not close one corner of the soffit on the northwest corner and squirrels were getting in and making off with insulation. We subsequently cut down all tree branches leading to the roof and closed off the soffit. Then we had to replace the insulation.
I had to bleach all the wood Bill Scanlon added to the whole renovation. I was sick for weeks.
All he was hired to do was the shell and that took almost two years. It was a couple of months work, tops. We planned to finish the inside ourselves. The repairs from the renovation of the part of the house that was exposed during the eight months he was absent took me what seemed like forever.
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