SJN Associates

The contractor estimated that his part of the overall renovation would take 4-5 weeks. It took almost 3 months. During this time, he didn't show up for 3 days one week and 2 days the next week without indicating that he would be away and without offering any explanation, afterward, about what had happened. During these absences, he did not answer calls to his cell phone. The contractor miscalculated the location of the cabinet above the refrigerator. The result is that he installed a high hat light in the ceiling where the front of the cabinet needed to go. I caught this mistake, asked him to remove that high hat fixture, and finally got the cabinet located correctly. The contractor miscalculated the location of the center island, installing it too close to the refrigerator and the dishwasher. The result was (a) a narrow aisle where I do most of my cooking preparation, (b) the top of the dishwasher door (when it was open) just inches from the front of the center island cabinets, and, (c) worst of all, barely a one inch clearance between the open refrigerator door and the corner of the center island counter top. I had to pay another contractor $125 to reposition the center island appropriately. The contractor installed a recessed medicine cabinet in my bathroom so high that I only could see my shoulders and head in the the mirror, and I could not possibly reach the items on the top shelf. To make things even worse, he installed the wall-mounted light fixture at least 4" above the medicine cabinet, so it almost looked like a ceiling-mounted fixture. I had to pay another contractor $350 to lower both to a normal position and re-plaster the surrounding walls. The contractor cut a piece of the crown molding that would run just below an a/c intake very unevenly (it looks as if his saw slipped while making the cut; a pencil line he had drawn made it clear that this was a very bad cut). Rather than making a better cut in another piece of crown molding, he installed the damaged one; I didn't catch this mistake until the contractor was finished and painters came to complete the living room. The contractor installed a new door in a pantry closet. When I questioned the wide and uneven space between the front edge of the door and the door frame, he adjusted the door frame to make it align properly. It seemed, with these and other incidents, that if I hadn't caught the problem, he would have left it as is. Due to the delays in this project, I ultimately hired my regular plumber and electrician to do tasks that the contractor was supposed to do. As a result, I had to adjust the final payment to the contractor to reflect the things he did NOT do. When the painters came to finish the kitchen and the bathroom, they commented that the contractor left the walls he had plastered in a very rough condition. The painters had to do extra work to smooth the surface of the walls before painting.