DOUBLE D CONSTRUCTION

Doug came over initally to scope out what he would need for the job. He arrived at the very end of the time period he said he would, and said something along the lines of "I almost blew you off!". I wasn't sure what that meant, but didn't follow up.We arranged for a later date to do the install, and Doug asked me to call him the day before to check to see what his schedule was like. Doug arrived at approximately the time we agreed to, worked steadily on the project. It took him approximately 3 hours from start to finish, which is about what he estimated it would take. My wife and I are happy with the outcome. Doug is a charming and good-natured guy, and clearly enjoys life. He is a local guy, proud of his kids, we enjoyed the experience of having him work in our home. I would hire him again for similar type work.

A "Seat of the Pants" Operation. From the start, Double D's Doug Dubin showed a lack of focus that raised some red flags, but my husband and I cut him some slack because (a) he was referred to us by a respected source and (b) he excused himself by saying he was trying to finish up a large, complicated project. He told me, for example, that he would provide a revised estimate by a certain date, but didn?t. My calls to his office number went unanswered. Our electrician finally reached him for us and learned that Doug had assumed we didn?t need the quote right away, since we?d said we would start the work when I returned from my 12-day vacation. The electrician had to spell it out for him that we needed to get things settled before I left, since we wanted the work to start as soon as I got back. I also thought I had arranged with Doug to drop by on a specified afternoon to talk about an additional bathroom remodel. When he didn?t come ? and didn?t call ? I called him on his cell phone. Spur of the moment, he?d decided to go skiing that day. (Fine. But call your customers to let them know. Don't just blow them off.) Then, during the four days before I left for vacation, I had to push-push-push to get Doug to commit to a day and time to come sit down with us and the electrician to firm things up before I left (I actually threatened to cut him loose then, which lit a fire under him). During that sit-down, we decided to get my home office done while I was gone. Doug was all grins and promises: ?Your office will be all ready for you when you get back.? Long story short: it wasn?t. The electrical work was done, as the electrician had promised. Of the work that Doug was responsible for, just the wallpaper had been stripped. Period. I learned from Doug that the subcontracted painter he had lined up had bailed on him. That finally explained the mystery of why he had sent Double D carpenters to strip wallpaper. (From both my husband -- who had no idea why carpenters were stripping wallpaper -- and the electricians, I learned that they were justifiably NOT happy, and made that very clear to everyone in the house.) After, I think, one day, Doug subcontracted Atomic Painting of Lynn-Swampscott, Mass., a two-man father/son operation, to continue the scraping, priming, and painting. Yes, Doug had to make some quick decisions when the original painter bailed. But he neither consulted nor communicated with my husband about what was going on, so my husband had no idea who was (or wasn?t) going to be showing up on any given day, why (or why not), to do what. He also sent a carpenter on a day when my husband had explicitly requested that no one show up. Faced with daily surprises like these, and questions about what to expect each day, my husband would call the office phone and get delayed or no responses. (To be fair, my husband kept losing track of Doug?s mobile phone number. On the other hand, Doug did acknowledge that he had never "gotten around to" forwarding his office phone to his mobile phone.) I returned from my Costa Rica vacation at 2:30 am on a Tuesday and got an earful in the car from my husband all the way home from the airport. Atomic Painting -- Brian and his son Eric -- came later that same morning to continue their work. Doug Dubin also showed up later that day. This is how he greeted me at the door: ?Guess where I?m going tomorrow? Costa Rica!? After dropping that bombshell (grinning from ear to ear, as if I should be delighted to hear the news) he explained that, spur of the moment, he?d decided to go with his wife to a destination wedding they initially hadn't planned to attend. But not to worry, he said. He was leaving Atomic Painting (an outfit we'd had NO say in hiring) in charge of everything we had hired Double D to do: ALL the scraping, ALL the painting, and ALL the ceiling work. He gave us Brian's phone number, asked for $1,000 progress payment on top of the $1,000 deposit, and was gone. For a week. After the initial shock, we actually felt relieved that Doug was out of the picture, since up to then he had added little or no value to the project. We crossed our fingers that Brian and Eric, with Doug gone, would work out fine. Bottom line, they didn?t. Rushing to make up for lost time in my office, they did a substandard job that we will now have to pay someone else to fix. Their clean-up was careless. They finished my office (and most of the scraping and residue removal of the stairwell) on Wednesday, then didn't come on Thursday (as expected) or Friday (unexpected, and I had to call Brian to find this out). At that rate, we figured, it would be 2013 before they finished our whole to-do list. There were some attitude issues as well. That Friday we decided we'd had enough, and we cut both Atomic Painting and Double D loose. Doug was, of course, still in Costa Rica, so my husband left a message on his cell phone. Since his return, Doug has made no effort to contact us to find out why we fired him, and has never seen Brian's and Eric's 'handiwork' in my office. Today, however, we received a bill from Double D Construction for an additional $2,000-plus. In other words, Double D expects more than $4K for a one- (small) room hack job and a stripped center entry/stairwell.