JD Construction, Inc.

Description of Work: Replaced upper deck and stained it

Description of Work: Was hired to do the bulk of the work on a turn-key house construction project. The verbal agreement prior to the start of work was that if the homeowners contributed to the construction work the costs would go down proportionally from the estimates. This did not happen. We found out after he was way over budget that his construction estimates were created based on Jon Pollen's guesses about how many hours each portion of construction would take him -- in all instances he went drastically over the time estimates and billed us at an hourly rate which caused the labor portion of the estimate to go over the estimate in EVERY aspect of the house he worked on. For construction of a whole home best practice would have been to provide estimates/quotes by the job, not by the hour. | |Over-ran estimates SEVERELY -- at times as much as %100 over the estimate without detailed notification until billing in spite of the fact that the homeowners worked diligently to negotiate with contractors and materials supply companies to come in under-budget on those items. Refused to work with us adequately to finished the project when the budget overrun was discovered and instead abandoned the project leaving us, already way over budget, to finish the project entirely ourselves. This was in winter with the house enclosed but with no heat, no drywall, no vapor barrier and only part of the insulation installed. | |Recommended a plumber sub-contractor that ended up walking off the job, putting a lien on the house for an exorbitant amount (later determined by a jury trial to be far higher than the plumber was actually owed). | |Jon Pollen bid and worked on electrical work in the house without informing us that it is ILLEGAL for him to do this work because he is not licensed for electrical work in the state of Alaska. We had to correct MANY code violations and hazards at additional expense in order to complete the home. | |We ended up having to spend tens of thousands of dollars more than anticipated because of this unethical contractor in order to finish our home to be safe, sound, and energy efficient. He was sloppy and careless in much of his work making it necessary to re-do work in order to finish the house. In one case an exterior wall that he framed was 3/4" off plumb in 3 feet. This kind of an error is structurally questionable and greatly increases the time and cost of drywall/finishing. In another instance he left the crawl space without ventilation during the transition from summer to fall which resulted in severe moisture build-up and a bad mold problem that we had to ultimately fix. | |If you choose to work with this contractor, particularly on large projects, make sure you have an iron-clad contract before you start. Better yet -- go with someone else.

Description of Work: John prepped and repaired drywall area in bedroom, dug out and repaired small crack in foundation, took down and replaced new ceiling fans (25 foot ceiling), put up new light fixtures in home, added roof snow stops to hold snow from sliding off the roof.