Gary English Construction

He's done two major projects for us; one was four years ago and one right now. I spend about $45000 the first time. I have used him for a hundred and fifty thousand once and recently in the last month we spent about twenty eight with him. I think that he's a flexible guy and a good problem solver. Every time we run into a problem it's nothing hard for him to fix. He's basically an all round guy.

I would not recommend him. He was very pleasant and accommodating at first. Most of his workers were considerate of my neighbors and tenants. After certain point in the project it seemed like they lost interest. I had problems with their honesty and punctuality. They kept dragging on the job unnecessarily and lots of things kept coming up. Once it got to finished work I had to repeatedly ask them to redo things since the quality was done poorly. The coordination with other contractors and craftsmen was really bad. His communication was very bad. He was never on the site and would come at the most once a week in the starting and later on once a month. He was terrible with the paper work. Some of his quality was good and some of it was bad. I would not use him again in the future.

Gary English was a hard man to reach. His voicemail was always full so you can't leave a message. He never picked up his phone and once it was disconnected. He rarely returned phone calls so you had to call him consecutively to annoy him inorder to get him to pick up. He also never showed up on the site to supervise his crew. Of the 6 weeks his laborer was at the house, he showed up maybe 5 or 6 times and each time for a good 10 minutes where he spent talking to us but not looking at the work done. When his guy started laying tile on the kitchen floor, if it wasn't that i rushed over there to see what's going on and ask him to make sure it was level, they would have laid tile on a floor that was 2 inches off from one end to the other! he also poured cement in my cleanout pipe and has not repaired that damage. he has left our home uninhabitable. In addition, two weeks ago, he abandoned the job and left it unfinished. he kept saying he needed more money so we kept buying all the supplies for him (over $2k worth) and then 2 weeks ago when he didn't show up for an appointment with the plumber, we started hearing from his subcontractors about how he told them he hadn't received any money yet so he couldn't pay them. We told them that he had received $14,500 initial draw for materials already. Appparently he hadn't paid anyone. one by one all his subs and laborers stopped showing up cuz they hadn't been paid in over 3 weeks. now we have reported him to the contractor's board as well as contacted his bond company where apparently his license is suspended as well as his bond is revoked. The subs are taking him to court and most likely so will we. I've got 2 mechanics liens on my house now because he failed to pay the concrete companies he used for the foundation work he did for the seller, which the seller had already paid him for. This man is a fraud and cannot be trusted. We learned the hard way. We have been homeless for 2 weeks now and our home is unlivable. he took the $14,500 and has been unable to provide proof of where that money went. The only supplies he may have purchased was drywall, nails and some plywood, which in my research at home depot may have cost about $500. The plumber, cabinet/countertops have not been paid for. We bought all the fixtures, floors, tiles, sealer, grout, all the supplies. We tried contacting him for the past 2 weeks with letters, emails, etc and he has not responded. He is trying to claim that we changed our contract when in fact he made promises he couldn't keep and has breached our contract. Worst part is the guys who did actually do work and hasn't been paid. We don't have any money to pay them... since Gary took it already. So future home improvement homeowners, be ware. Do your research first. We thought we did our due diligence but in the end we were naive and trusted a man who was full of falsehoods. Don't ever pay someone until they can give you a list of everything they will be spending on and request lien waivers for each time you pay them for that specific item. Learn from our mistake. We are now waiting to hear back from the bond company to see if they can cover most of the loss as well as repair the cleanout he broke so we can atleast move into the house. Next steps will be to take him to small claims to get the rest back and get all the subs paid off so we can remove liens from our property and clear our title.