Gercken Construction Services Inc

If I could pick no stars or negative stars I would. The owner of this company, Richard Gercken, talked a big game when trying to get my mother's (83-year old) business/first check of over $10,000, but he did not follow through with quality work. We even reduced the amount of work in the initial contract (full blown kitchen & hallway) and he tried to give us a new contract for more money saying that adding dry wall and paint to a small laundry room (with existing walls) was more money then installing a hallway and full blown kitchen! He would not return any money for doing less work. Every step of the basement remodel was stressful dealing with him and was defective in some way. What he says verbally and what he puts in small writing in a contract are two different things. For stance, he quoted us for installing a tile shower, but if we wanted to actually use it, we had to pay extra for sealing the grout; and we were quoted for finishing the walls in our basement, but if we wanted insulation, we had to pay extra ($1800). He had a timeframe of 4-6 weeks, but we are half way through month number six. The owner of this company has treated us poorly throughout this process and we DO NOT RECOMMEND THEM! Now here are some of the work issues: ALL of the plumbing install had leaks and some needed to be redone 2-3 times due to leaks, the main valve for the water was put behind tile when all he had to do was move the main valve 2 feet into the laundry room on the other side of the shared wall or move the wall (they built) over 2 feet, the wall shower head interferes with the waterfall shower head because they are too close together, the shower heads are not centered, The sink in the garage was not put in the place I asked it to be installed (I was told the guy did not want to make another trip to Home Depot to get a longer hose so he put it where he wanted and right next to an electrical plug that he told me earlier that it could not be installed next to), the new walls and pocket door framing are all crooked, we can still see dry wall mud on walls because the paint is not sufficient, our vinyl flooring is already coming up all over the place, the tile guy put ledges on our corner seats that stick up past the tile which now hold water, the tile guy put a ledge all around the nitches that stick out past the tile, the grout on the floor was insufficient and he has to come back to redo it (still not great), I have too many levels in my ceiling when I was told it would all be flat except for the beam going across, I have unsightly vents out the back and front of my house because he did not have enough knowledge to recommend turning the rooms by 1/4 to run the vents to the side of the house (which is where he said they would initially be), we have electrical junction boxed all over the ceiling, the electrical plug ins are all different heights on the walls, they broke our door (said nothing to us) and installed it crooked (we had the door removed and fixed by another person), the doors do not have enough paint on them and I don't think any primer was used before painting them (metal doors and the paint is scraping right off), they installed a piece of dry wall over an issue in our joist without mentioning the issue to us (we were told by several of his workers that they brought it to his attention and he said just cover it), which is causing the ceiling to bow, trim work over the brick was installed that does not match our style of trim as a bandaid to hide the bowing ceiling (which is still there so it did not work), this trim work was shorter then the brick on the wall and did not match up to the side trim (we had to remove it and have someone redo it). I also had a discussion with the owner because he wanted to install baseboard before the flooring. I told him I thought the flooring should be installed first to prevent gaps because I did not want quarter round. We argued about this and he said he was so sure the baseboard could be installed before the flooring without gaps that he would pay for the quarter round to be installed if it happened. Well guess what - It happened! I gave him the formula for staining the quarter round, but it showed up the first time too light and the second time too dark, gunky and scratched up (apparently he cannot follow simple instructions). Then he told me he would send new quarter round and I could do it myself!!!! I guess he wanted me to fix his mistake! It is his job to do quality control, but we have been the ones catching the mistakes even though he claims he has been on the job site. Question - Why wasn't he catching the mistakes through out this remodel? Our remodel is still not finished and he is no longer responding. I have videos, photos, text messages, etc... to back up this up! Spent a lot of money with messed up results! DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY