I have filed two cases in the small claims court against two unlicensed contractors (my bad) who deceived me into believing that they knew how to do kitchen cabinet remodeling work. Neither of them did. They both in their own wrong doing destroyed my kitchen cabinets. The first person I hired was supposed to restore my cabinets by stripping the wood and sanding them down and staining them. She, too, was to contract a person to do a granite counter top for the kitchen. For this work she charged me $300.00 dollars. She made me all kinds of promises that this work she will do on my cabinets will come out beautiful. I will be satisfied with her work. I believed her, (my bad). I gave a $1,500.00 dollars deposit and balance was to be paid upon completion of work. Plus later again, my bad, I gave her another $800.00 dollars. Total $2,300.00 dollars. After five weeks and we having experienced no progress in our kitchen by her, but just a mess and damages done (a broken kitchen desk, a broken drawer, a two door cabinet stripped of it's paint that was only to be taken down and nothing more done to it, Some stain splashes on my enclosed patio cement slab, sliding glass door window and TV screen, and on kitchen floor tile, stain brush marks on kitchen wall and on inside of cabinets stain brush marks and even fingerprint marks on press wood, even my entry door) due to she having used four people, her son, two friends, and her housecleaning lady to do the work while she just watched them and told them to do this and that. All are inexperienced in kitchen cabinet restoration including her. My husband fired her when finally after five weeks we saw her finished work she did for us at her house with our cabinet doors and drawers she had taken to her house to work on all that time. What a nightmare. The face and back side of doors were not sanded down right. They have a two tone look on them. One shinny area and a dull dry looking area. Also on the face of the drawers for not having been sanded down right have a curdy (cottage cheese) look on them. Too, two of the counter cabinet have a broken piece of wood that she was supposed to repair before staining it and laying the granite on top. She didn't do this. She stained it and left it that way. When I brought it to her attention she told me that it's ok. It won't be noticeable once the granite is laid on top. Too she stained four corbals and painted only half of the fifth one. When I brought that to her attention too, she told me that she will do that after the granite is laid on top. This woman did not do the work that she told me and my husband she was going to do. The beautiful cabinet work she promised us to do for us was not beautiful. It was horrible looking instead. We asked her for our money back and she refused to give it back to us. She told me that she does not have the money and to at least give her credit for the work, time and all the money she spent on the stain, stripper and cleaning solution (degreaser) she had to buy to clean the wood with. The label on that degreaser shows that it only cost her 99 cents and that she bought it at the 99 cent store. We demanded our money back and told her she either give it back to us or we will have to take her to court on this. She said to take her to court then. Now regarding the second case. When this woman contracted this man to do the granite work for us, he charged her $1,500.00 dollars to do the work. Plus $80.00 dollars for the plumbing work. She not having all this money to give him, gave him only a $700.00 dollar deposit This left her owing him an $880.00 balance. The $700.00 dollars would come from my husband and I for that was our balance left with her upon completion of the work. When this man bought the granite to my house and I saw it. I knew immediately that this granite was second quality. It had a streak across it that didn't look right. He denied this when I asked him if it was a second. He told me that it's not. It's first quality. That it's rock and it's just a natural streak on it. I told him that if this being true for him to use the better looking side of the granite and perhaps this piece will be cut off. He ignored what I told him to do. Had he done what I told him, the part that would of been cut off is the part of the square he measured to cut off for the sink to fit in. That piece is very good and there would of only been a very small streak showing at the end of it there on the sink and very unnoticeable.instead that streak is there showing to my displeasure. On the day he worked on the granite (Saturday 9/17) he worked very hard on it and for many hours. He brought his stepson to help him. He even hired two men to help them turn the granite over so he can work on the backside of it. The following day (Sunday) he came for a short while and worked on the granite. He claimed he was not feeling well. That his back was hurting him very much. He left. On Monday he found out that the woman was no longer working for us because she called him up to tell him an told me so when I called him to tell him about it and I not knowing where we were going to go from there. He told me she was on the line and put me on a three way line so I can here what she was telling him. He pretended to be on my side when I told him the reason why we didn’t want her to continue the work for us. He told me he told her she should give us our money back. Why go to court and she risk losing her contractors license. That she told him that she doesn’t care if we take her to court. She is always having to go to court. He told me that he reminded her of the dog incident and that she said that’s true and that’s she is very afraid that I‘m going to use this against her. (This dog incident has to do with her son’s dog having bit my sister-in-law there at her house on her eyebrow and she having been rushed to the hospital. The bite is very serious. This woman had told me that the dog was put to sleep.) I told him that this dog incident has nothing to do between her and I. This is between my sister-in -law and her. Why he was so into this because thereafter he was constantly reminding her of this is beyond me. He told me that she was constantly calling him up to find out what is going to happen in our situation. Too, he told me that he will be our witness in court and testify against her on our behalf if it comes to that. Right away he had told me that she is not going to pay him the money she owes him. Now he began pressuring me to let him do the cabinet work for us. That for $2,500.00 dollars he will put up new wall and counter cabinets. Lay the granite at no cost to me, and he too made this sound real good. I Thinking that he was sincere and on our side and really truly upset with that woman for she having done him wrong too. I told him that I don’t have that much money. That what I have left is the $700.00 balance I was going to owe her upon completion of the work that was going to go to him had she done right by me and $1,000.00 dollars I was going to use to put mosaic tile on the floor he said he would do for me. He told me to give him the $1,700.00 dollars as a deposit so he can go buy the new Cherry color cabinets and in five days I will have my beautiful kitchen. I fell for it. He put this in writing and I made him out a check for $1,700.00 dollars. But, he, just like that woman, was full of promises and no action. Five days turned out to be three weeks of nothing but frustration and arguments with him because of all the runaround he was giving my husband and I. He breached the contract and left and we have not seen him anymore. He lefty us with no kitchen. He dismantled all the cabinets off the floor and wall and only bought and brought us five counter cabinets owing us nine wall cabinets and not the color we agreed on. The measurements are all wrong. Two inches of cement is showing away from the floor tile. The kitchen sink cabinet was cut wrong. It was not big enough to fit the plumbing right. He left no space the for the garbage disposal box with switch. Our sink was left outside in the enclosed patio cement slab. So was our dismantled microwave oven. He left the two heavy granite pieces outside on the front side of our house and for us to worry about on how to get it out of there. We had to hire some men to carry the granite into our garage. He made out with another $650.00 dollars too. This money was given to him when that woman was still with us for him to buy us a extra wall cabinet and a five foot granite piece for that other counter he too was supposed to put up for us. On the last day we saw him I had given him a check for $100.00 so he can buy some and molding for our panty to panel it and also to buy a door for it. I thought for sure he was going to do all this work for us for he signed a new contract I made out to him of five days in which he had three days left to finish or to pay me back double.instead he left and never came back. He will not even answer any of his two phones. He is alive and is around. My husband saw him the day he drove Alvaro to this mans house to go ask him to pay him the money he owes him. Alvaro is one of the men that he hired the first day to helped him turn the granite over. He never paid him for this and besides other work he did for him. Alvaro became friends with us. So when my husband took him to this mans house he told him that day that he is going to come to our house the next day. He never did nor did he go to the car to talk to my husband. This man was always full of lies and excuses.
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