R & E Custom Construction

From the beginning we should have seen the red flags. When he was constructing the deck, he cut the gas line, because he didn't bother to notify the utility companies to flag the lines. Also, that is why he didn't get a construction permit. Never having work like this done, we were totally ignorant about the permit. Upon completion of the deck, it "outwardly" looked fine. So he started work on the bathrooms. The bathroom upstairs that we were having a walk-in shower put in turned out to be a disaster. Again, outwardly, it looked great. But within a few weeks, the adhesive he had used to put the tiles in the shower down were loose and the grout never did dry. Then when he did the work on the downstairs bathroom, installing the jacuzzi tub, his bright idea was to put the tub in a foot off the floor and install stair going up to it. He also moved the toilet and reinstalled it in at an angle. This was not a large bathroom. This bathroom being used by a 75-year old woman with bad knees. We had to hire Dornbusch Construction to come in and fix these problems, which ended up costing us an additional $3,000. We also found out while repairs were being made, that he did not use the proper vapor barrier, etc. that is needed for a shower. Also, the tile on the bathroom floor had the same problem and grout was constantly coming up. When we decided to have a 3 season porch built over the deck, we put out bids for the work. R & E came in at $10,000 over any other bid we had. Needless to say, Dornbusch Const. came in and built the porch. During the construction, they found out that the deck was not properly attached to the house and supports were few and far between. It cost us an additional $4,000 to fix what R & E didn't do correctly in the first place. The two doors we had him install...the inside door cost $300 and the outer storm door $100...he charged $3,000 to do. I didn't find out how much the doors cost until I started to check on line for the cost. He also plowed out our driveway the winter before last when we had so much snow and he broke the outside faucet. We didn't know anything about this until we realized the sump pump was running night and day for 3 days. We had to have a plumbing company come and temporarily fix this until spring when we had the faucet fixed. Meanwhile the water running down the driveway in the middle of winter froze in 2-3 inches at the base of the drive and while we were on vacation, Mr. Loots took it upon himself to "get rid of the ice" by taking his plow and banging it into the driveway, and cracking the pavement. Another thing that happened was when he was tearing the upstairs bathroom up to he used a reciprocating saw to saw through the tub surround and sawed through into an adjoining bedroom wall, destroying a custom paint job and trim. Going back over all this makes me ill, but I want to warn anyone that may be thinking of employing R & E Construction/Rob Loots to think twice. Remember...he IS NOT LICENSED OR BONDED and doesn't know the first thing about construction. By my last accounting, we paid $10,000 to fix the problems and by my reckoning were over charged somewhere around $35,000.

They overcharged me for the work done. They also destroyed property and stole some of my belongings out of the garage. My stone grinder had been replaced by an old one. They also replaced the wood that it sits on and destroyed the cord. I had two wooden barrels on each side of my driveway. They ran over one of them and then they decided they would plow my driveway. I didn't ask them to do this, but they did it, charged me and ran over the other barrel. I also had a decorative piece of wood on the garage. They took it down and walked on it a few times. I gave them a check and they added in a ton of money that was never mentioned. I did end up getting $1300 back, but there was still an extra $400-500 charged. For ripping me off, I had them come back out and do the garage and roofing on the two sheds. As for the siding, they didn't complete it near the bottom of the buildings. The siding near the windows, they were supposed to caulk and paint and they didn't do any of that. They put in a stall in my bathroom, a new faucet, and a towel rack and charged me $1000 for that. They remodeled a closet for me as well and charged me $1800, but my son looked at it and said they barely changed it and I shouldn't have paid more than $100. Three of the pieces of siding have already fallen off and he just came back and nailed it up again. You don't nail up siding! It took him all day to put in a dishwasher. He put in a counter-top that was square pieces of "granite," but those pieces are now discoloring.