I have so many home renovation projects that I would like to do, but I haven’t done any of them. One huge reason for that is that I’m not sure who to hire. I’ve hired a couple contractors for home renovation projects at a previous house, and one was a bad experience. The other was literally a nightmare experience where he stole our money and didn’t finish the job.

If anyone knows a reliable contractor, please send them my way!

In this story, one homeowner is struggling to get a home renovation project going, and the delay is due to the contractor. The first problem was deciding on a contractor, but once that was solved, the problem continued once the homeowner saw the plans for the home renovation. It was not what they had discussed and agreed on!

Keep reading for all the details.

WIBTA if I leave my general contractor holding the bag

I have been trying to the ball rolling on a major home renovation project for about 6 months.

General Contractors have been very hard to pin down, however there has been one (call him Alex) who I have been working with on quotes and design ideas for several months now.

We have been reticent to go with Alex because he seemed a little rigid, particularly about insisting we put in this one support column in the middle of the room. We didn’t want it as it would be an eyesore and obstruct our view out of a large window.

All the other GCs we’ve had come through to provide quotes have said that it’s not necessary, but he insists it is.

Alex was still one of the best options.

Eventually we narrowed it down to 2 contractors, Alex and another guy.

The other guy’s quote was $9k less, didn’t include that support column, but he couldn’t start until next Spring.

Alex could start in a couple weeks (and we were hoping to have this done before winter).

I went back to Alex and said “if you can come down in price a few grand and submit the architectural plans that don’t include that support column, we’ll ink the deal today”.

It seemed like they were in agreement.

We shook hands on it, I wrote him a deposit check.

He told me that the plan of action was to draw up the formal architectural diagrams (thus far he only provided us with sketches), present them to us for approval, and then submit them to the city for permit review.

Several days passed of radio silence, and I finally texted him and asked if he could provide a rough timeline for next few weeks in terms of diagrams, reviews, start dates.

He replied that he had already supplied the drawings to the city and told me he would have his admin email me a copy.

Uh-oh!

After looking closely at the drawings, I spotted that they included the column!

I asked him right away why it included the support column.

And he said his architect insisted on including it.

I’m sure the architect had his reasons, but my problem was that Alex never informed me. I had to ask for the plans, and then find out myself after looking closely…and that was after the plans were submitted.

He was hesitant to move forward.

This fundamental communication breakdown gave me serious concern about moving forward with him.

I immediately stopped payment on our deposit check and called him up.

He went round and round about how his hands were tied…but none of it excused the fact that he never communicated anything with me, and that this approach was not what we agreed to.

I said that if this is how he is going to communicate, and the fact that now we’re going to have a design we didn’t want, I’m likely going to pull the plug on the whole deal.

Alex doesn’t want him to back out.

He said “I already ordered a bunch of materials (windows, etc). If you pull out, what do I do about this?”

I essentially told him that it was a YP, and a result of his poor communication.

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He will likely be holding the bag for tens of thousands of dollars in materials if I pull out, so I feel bad about that…especially since this is all over one little support post. But I feel that he went back on his word.

Maybe this support post really is important. I wonder if there’s any way they could talk to the architect about why he insisted on including it because it seems that the architect is the real problem when it comes to including the support post being a problem.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer complaint that led to them losing their VIP status.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks the contractor is responsible for the problem.

Another person was in a similar situation, but their contractor handled it differently.

This person has a suggestion.

Another person thinks it’s an easy problem to solve.

Honestly, I doubt that the contractor even ordered the supplies. He’s probably just saying that to guilt the homeowner into not canceling the job.

I’m pretty skeptical about anything a contractor says. It’s too bad to feel that way, but I have yet to hire a contractor that I would ever hire again.

I don’t think OP should feel bad at all or feel obligated to pay the contractor. This sounds like a big home renovation project, and you want to be happy with it when it’s done. You don’t want to be upset that you felt tricked into agreeing to a plan you didn’t want to agree to.