The Renovators

Shannon Davidson and his partner Chris Hicks came highly recommended, so we thought we had a good contractor. The role of the GC is to make sure the work is done according to what was agreed upon at the time of contract. Unfortunately, not too long into the job, we discovered that we had a texting contractor who would rarely appear at the site to supervise his subs, but who could be counted on to show when he needed money. The job was no small job. It included a very large bluestone patio, an outdoor kitchen, pergola, fountain, and a total kitchen rip out and renovation inside. Since this contractor turned out not to be hands- on, we constantly had subs showing up unsupervised. This became quite problematic with the patio. The grouting was amateurish at best. They even laid the patio over our sprinkler system even though it was clearly marked. These things made it necessary to rip up a great deal of the grout and redo it, and it required fixing the sprinkler system and addressing a drainage issue - one that should have been addressed before construction as we agreed on. Most things had to be redone 2 or 3 times. If I weren't supervising the best I could, more of the job outside would have had to be redone. The outdoor kitchen had to be redone a couple of times due to incorrect measurements. The granite top had to be redone because a template was never made. The plumbing and electrical work constantly required additional visits due to mistakes or misunderstandings because we had no one on site overseeing the job etc. These conditions lengthened the job considerably. The contractor made good on these corrections, but the inconvenience was immense. For the pergola, I was introduced to the carpenters who were going to build it, but they failed to show and new ones were sent. A load of wood was delivered and two guys showed up by themselves. I asked them how many pergolas they had built, and one of them admitted that he had experience with only one - his personal one. The other gentleman had no experience building one. They were sent with no plans as well. I was asked by my contractor via text to give them a photo of what I wanted. Later, I was asked to trace out the shape of the ends of the beams directly onto the wood. I felt I had to be there all the time because of this lack of supervision of the subs. I ended up researching and buying brackets for the pergola so I could end up with a pergola that was close to the one I showed to my contractor originally. In the end, the pergola came out okay, but the patio floor was a huge disappointment (see photos), and there were structural problems with the outdoor kitchen. Grout covers most of the stones in many places, and generally looks sloppy. Inside our house, similar problems were occurring. The lack of attention to detail, lack of supervision of subs, subs acting unprofessionally (complaining, voicing concerns about getting paid, and throwing fits) and missing cabinet components, made this as stressful as the outside work. I had sub contractors at my home on weekends and at night. Since nothing was covered, as agreed upon, the dust created a huge mess, and keeping my furnishings clean was almost impossible. I made my displeasure known to this contractor over and over again about the texting, the problems on site, and the problems with some subs, but he failed to make any meaningful changes. It was found out during the job, that this contractor had 13 jobs going and my husband and I felt that our job - although totaling almost $75,000 worth of work was not that important to him, or he was just spread too thin. The worst of it was not having the permits pulled for this job that we stressed from the beginning and insisted on throughout the job, only to finally give up in the end due to the lack of coordination of t