Valley Finish Inc

Briefly put if you ever have Valley Finish do any work for you make sure everything is in writing and details are there as Jim Crowe, Owner of Valley Finish Inc, I've come to realize he is a master manipulator of the English language, aka con artist. You'd probably be better served and have much less drama if you go with a different contractor. In the beginning it went very slow, my wife and I we're trying to work with him naively thinking he would return the favor somehow. Work was supposed to start ~1st of Sept. Promised to be in house by Thanksgiving, then Christmas and finally had to say enough, we're coming in on ~22nd of Jan. We were living in another house and luckily didn't need to get out, but this job kept dragging on. We'd show up numerous times and no one would even be on the site working. We'd have numerous excuses, but through my last job with Jim Crowe, Owner of Valley Finish Inc, I've come to realize he is a master manipulator of the English language, aka con artist. He seems like a really nice guy, may even invite you to church, tell you about his kids, but I tell you he will lie/twist things so they are almost always in his favor. He likes to use the term 'Lifetime Warrany' on his stuff and tell you he wants to be your go to guy, but when you pin him down the 'Lifetime Warranty' only applies to the cabinet hinges and then if you pin him down further it also only applies if he likes you. We had numerous change orders which yes many we due to us, but lots of others were due to Jim not listening. We hired Jim as a General in which he assured us he had done this before and he was the highest price out of all the bids. We saw a job he did and were pleased with the finish work and called a few of his clients but we could not find any other information, so this is part of the reason I am taking time to write this review. He is not a General. I had to have almost every single trade come back out and make repairs/finish work they left unfinished when we were assured it was finished. There were even code violations that somehow passed inspections. When I crawled in the attic and crawl space and missing insulation, electrical wiring just running across the floor of the crawl space, exposed dirt all over in the crawl and not covered back with plastic, then dirt piled right up on the untreated wood that was part of wall supports on the addition that was built. New windows without screens and more. Jim's response was he wasn't directly responsible, it was the subs, but he chose the subs. Not only that when you hire a General you expect them to ensure the work was done and done proper to the best of their knowledge, but Jim did not even check on the sub's work. Sub's came back out and made repairs, but even things he/his employee was directly responsible for we had to have them come back out and make more repairs. Jim's specialty is cabinets, yet we've had to have them come back numerous times due broken hardware and even our cabinet doors were out of alignment and many of them were crooked. We've had cheaper cabinets in previous homes which the hardware has held up better than these. What kind of finish guy leaves cabinet doors crooked? I just had to repair our mixer lift assist, wouldn't stay up on the left side unless you pulled on it, found the left arm was too far in, relocated it myself and now it work and his specialty is cabinets? As change orders started coming thru I had a talk with Jim saying anything over $5K I have to know prior and approve as I need to know the costs of things as while we would say go ahead and add it it's minor, we'd get hit with a bill that was much higher than anticipated. A month later he hits us up with a ~$18,000 change order and I was not happy. When I referred him back to our previous conversation his argument was, "well this piece was only $4K and that $3K and that.,.so these weren't over your $5K. Whoops sorry these two were over $6K and $8K., but not by much." So back to my con-artist/manipulator of words comment. I ended up paying most of it but held out some as we had concerns with our concrete and more, which we both agreed to. Overall unfortunately for us we held out less than 1% of the entire job. Looking back I should have held out 10% until the warranty period was up. On a number of things we had to tell Jim we want that written down/included in the bid and he even missed numerous things that we had on our bid, Front door change out and up size, windows in the addition. Our bid also included alder wrapped windows and a frames and ceiling boxes, yet he tried to not do the windows so we had to call him on that. We went through with him the rooms we wanted the Alder in, which was the whole south half of the first floor, yet when we walked into the addition there was no Alder. Jim claimed that wasn't included because when we walked the job with him that room wasn't even built so he didn't include it. I get a $6K change order to include that, which I unhappily paid as he claimed he was so behind in material and labor cost and that was his cost, supposedly not even marked up. Later I caught him in a number of outright lies, with one being 'supposedly' his cost and when I pinned him down and said no your cost is X, but my bill is Y, he then says well his cost has to include his time. That's not cost! If your going to add anything on the addition of your cost then it's markup/cost plus fee/etc, but that's the kind of word games he plays. I wanted a carport and since I figured we had worked some things out with Jim and it was a simple project, I would have him get me a price. I get an estimate of almost $70K! Sure it was deluxe, paved driveway add, lots of landscaping, but I told him my budget was $40K max. Got a breakout of costs and finally I ended up hiring Valley Finish to build the building, which he subbed out. A building permit was never obtained. When I directly asked Jim about this he originally told me a building permit wasn't needed for a carport, he's the 'builder' he should know right? I told him I would check with the county and sure enough a building permit was needed. When I called him on this he lied to me and told me he never said such. While there can be a misunderstanding on many things, plain and simple he out right lied to me. Jim refused to get a building permit, $260 on a $15K project to him. Told me since I directly hired the concrete guys it was my responsibility. Sure I was ignorant, it's called a building permit, not a foundation/footing/concrete permit, but Jim gave me the info of the footing sizes he wanted and luckily I made sure it was on my concrete bid. I go get a building permit, footings pass just fine, inspector was understanding but really appreciated being able to see the bid I had with the number of footings and the sizes, since the carport was already built. My new carport doesn't pass building inspection due to the structure itself and Jim Crowe refuses to send the contractor back out to make the needed repairs to allow it to pass. They were all relatively minor, added support brackets and blocking. He blames things on me from not getting plans because I was too cheap, yet he never said I needed plans and the landscaping plans (which we overpaid him for) included the carport and county accepted those as plans. When I asked Jim for the contractors info that built the carport that failed the inspection he refused to even give me that info and when I informed him it was Idaho law to do such he still refused to give me the info. One would think a contractor would at least stand behind the work they did to at least have it pass a simple building inspection. I am yet holding back other information which further proves he's a liar. I don't readily call people such, but I will call it how it is and as I said earlier, often things can be just misunderstandings and not lies, but Jim Crowe lied to me and numerous others multiple times. We had to get a lawyer involved and are yet working out the details of existing issues in our home. I recently got approval from the lawyer to post, so BEWARE!