Man Of Steel General Contracting

My 84 year old grandparents hired this guy to do a roof for them. I was unaware of his unprofessional behavior until the last day of the job when I stopped to check in on the progress. The main roof was already finished and only part of the porch roof remained. They said the contractor seemed professional at first. His quote was "$11,500-12000" including clean up and cleaning out the gutters of jobsite debris as a result of the tear off. He had a long list of references. My Grandparents hired him and when he came to the house to write up the agreement, he took back his original quote and gave them a re-worded contract that was missing some things. He also took back his list of references. Then he tried to get my Grandparents to "split" the price of a dumpster with him. They refused because he initially said he would remove all debris and clean up the site after the job. His work was slow at first. He consistently showed up mid-morning and usually appeared intoxicated. He staggered around a lot and tripped over things. He and two other workers would all disappear into the small jobsite trailer together for periods of time and afterwards his staggering would be much worse. One day he had extra crew members and one of them started screaming at Marshall about being so drunk and that he would be damned if he was going to let Marshall fall and drag one of them off the roof and kill them. The roof appeared ok from the ground. On the last day 10/21/2020, one worker showed up and finished the porch roof in the rain. I stopped to inspect the finished product and saw that the gutters are full of shingle pies and pieces of wood. The gutters are overflowing and broken away from the roof in places. The porch roof is sagging and the hip caps look like a snake, the caps missed covering many of the nails. The entire porch roof is spongy and you can see the shingles squish in when you walk on it. I called Marshall and he came and fixed the caps to cover the nail heads. And agreed to clean out the gutters. Marshall was visibly intoxicated as we all observed him working. I brought up the issue of the porch roof being spongy and it visibly sags when a person walks on it. Marshall insisted that the roof had been re-sheeted and was spongy because it was " a hundred years old". I countered with the fact that he was hired to fix the roof in the first place, to which he said he was only hired to tear it off, re-sheet it and reshingle it. Today 11/1/2020 there is standing water on the roof and water is leaking through the porch roof. There gutters on the house are over flowing or leaking with shingle pieces clogging them and sticking up out of the gutter in multiple places. I called Marshall today at 11:15 Am, it took two calls. The first call he picked up and utter something incoherent, I asked "is this Man of Steel general contracting?" He made some noises and hung up. I called back immediately he answered incoherently i asked the same question twice. And he said "yep". I informed Marshall who I was, where I was, that he was hired tonput a new roof on this address, and that the porch roof had standing water on it and is leaking water out of the soffits. He uttered "I'll have to go look at it one of these mornins". Now we are stuck with a $12,000 defective roof.

We originally called Jim at Man of Steel along with about 25 other roofing contractors about repairing the roof on a 2.5 story garage built in 1910 . Out of 25 roofing contractors, only five ended up giving estimates. Some contractors didn't bother to call back, and others refused to come out and give a estimate unless the home owner my sister who lives in another state was there for the estimate.(Companies that use high pressures sales tactics and want to close the deal the first time out, don't want to shoot one legged, and insist all home owners be there for the estimates). The original estimates ran from 5k to 12k, and Jims was for 5k, but I noticed, only after another contractor came out and bid that Jims bid didn't include the missing or rotted soffit, trim, and fascia that one other contractor had listed as optional. Jim's estimate was very specific in what it included, but I assumed that he quoted the whole job, and that should of included the soffit, trim, and fascia. Since Jim was the first to respond, and had the lowest bid, and also provided references along with his estimate, I decided to call him back out, and re-estimate the job to include what was missing. I also added the window at the 2.5 story high peak on the garage front which was broken to the order. Jim also under estimated the rafters that needed to be replaced by 3 in both estimates. That was tacked on to the bill during the job. Jim added a 3 percent charge for using a credit card option which wasn't on the first estimate either when I told him my sister wanted to use a credit card to pay. A couple of things that perturbed me, but since I noticed that the other estimates, except the one that stated the soffit, and trim was optional didn't include the work either, I over looked these irritants. I don't know how you replace the roofing without repairing the missing soffit, and trim, you can skip the fascia because the roof doesn't lay on it ,but it's only common sense to estimate it all for a complete roofing job! Anyways the total for the job when completed came out to about 400 bucks under the next estimate if I included the optional replace the soffit trim and fascia in what was in there estimate. My sister gave me the option on which of the two companies to pick for the job, and I decided on Jim. The only demand my sister had was we needed a certificate of insurance before we signed the agreement! Jim had produced a copy of his insurance policy, but that doesn't prove that it is in effect. I called Jim, and he gave me the new estimate on November 3 2014, and we though the work would start the last week of November, but different circumstances, weather, and Jim finishing another Job delayed the start. Jim also had to wait for his insurance provider to send him a certificate of insurance threw the mail. All this delayed everything. We signed the agreement to start work on December 12,2014, and Jim started the work the following weekend. He completed about 2/3's of the work in December. The weather prevented him from finishing the rest until near the end of January 2015. The Metal roofing looks great, but I noticed that they didn't stager the replaced fascia boards. While on the under side of the roof, this looks astatically unpleasing to me They also failed to replace a couple of 1"X 12" boards under the Metal Roof that I would have replaced if I did the job myself, not rotted, but pieces fell off them when they removed the old roofing materials leaving gaps between them which looks astatically unpleasing to me from the inside of garage's second floor. But I still give them an A on quality, because there is no A-.