Frosty Tuttle Home Builders

Description of Work: We contracted with Mr. Tuttle (Built/Suit) to build a fireplace and chimney. the fireplace was built in the summer of 2012 and we did not use it until colder weather. At the itme we built the first fire the fireplace would not draw the smoke out of our house. Instead our house filled up with smoke. We called Mr. Tuttle and set up a time for him and his brick mason to come and inspect the fireplace. Upon their arrival we built a fire in the fireplace and again it did not draw the smoke out of the house. Mr Tuttle offered to place a draft inducer (simply a fan) on top of our chimney to help pull the smoke out. I refused. I informed Mr. tuttle that we had paid for a functioning fireplace and that is what we expected. The only repair possible was to tear down the fireplace and rebuild it correctly. He asked me at whose expense this would take place. Several days later we had a well respected brick mason inspect our fireplace and he found numerous deficiencies, ie, flue tile grossly undersized, throat of the fireplace too short. not mortar between flue tiles, etc. I contacted Mr. Tuttle and informed him of the findings and he told me he had never seen a fireplace built by his mason and did not know if he could even build a fireplace. He then proceeded to hang up on me. After several attempts to allow Mr. Tuttle to resolve this problem to no avail we contacted an attorney and had him contact Mr. Tuttle. In the end Mr. Tuttle told me that he had never promised us the fireplace would work but with the looming threat of litigation he had his employees tear down the old fireplace, haul it away and pay for all materials and labor for someone else to rebuild the fireplace.

Description of Work: We contacted Mr. Tuttle to perform major renovations and build an addition to our home. We had been led to believe that he was a legitimate General Contractor who built very nice expensive homes and had access to carpenters, electricians, masons, plumbers, etc which would be required to actually build a home. For about three weeks we had a substantial crew working on our house renovating a bedroom. As we progressed through the rest of the renovations the crew disappeared and we were left with Mr. Tuttles son and one other worker. Mr. Tuttle's son and the other individual did not show up on some days and on other days they would only work a couple of hours. One bathroom was torn out and remodeled by these two persons. We found a shower drain line had been leaking under our home for a couple of weeks before it was repaired and a new faucet set in a bath sink they installed would not work. We wound up hiring a licensed plumber, which they did not utilize, to repair the sink after we had paid the Tuttles to install the faucet. The drain line from our central air unit was broken during the bath remodel and was not repaired until we found out about it. Also, the return air vent had to be re-done by a licensed heat and air person whom we paid after the Tuttle's were paid to do it because the one they put in was less than half the size required for the size central heat/air unit we had. The heat and air contractor told us had it not been replaced it would have caused our $7000 unit to malfunction. These two installed hardwood flooring in two bedrooms which turned out very nice and we were pleased with the work. By the time we got to the massive two story addition to our home Mr. Tuttle told us we were no longer dealing with him but would now be dealing with his son and Mr. Tuttle would not take responsibility for anything his son did. We had not hired his son but had hired Mr. Tuttle and we were in no position now to go seek out another contractor. With only these two persons working, the work dragged out from February into May. We made our displeasure known to Mr. Tuttle on more than one occasion about how long it was all taking (much longer than originally quoted). He assured us of deadlines that simply never took place. Part of Mr. Tuttle's spiel was how they liked to "get in and get out" while completing a job quickly. Our relationship ended on very unfriendly terms. We were left with a leaking roof and several parts of the project left unfinished even though we had paid for them.