Deck Master Home Imp

This company is also known as "Master Builders." I had used them for three other, much smaller, jobs and they were great. They started as promised and finished within budget. Based on those experiences, I decided to trust them with this big job. Unfortunately, this job was a nightmare. After fifteen weeks of fighting with them to honor their contract with me, I finally had to give up and have another contractor complete the job. I wound up leaving about $1,650 of my money in their hands, and having to pay the other contractor besides. On February 28th, the salesman wrote up the contract. He told me that: (1) they would REPLACE my existing windows with Andersen 400 series windows; (2) they would use certified installers for the CertainTeed siding (3) they would trim out the exterior of the house as per my specifications; (4) Deck Master's employee would act as foreman for the entire job, supervising it the entire way (5) they would custom build my decorative eave brackets, building a sample first for approval; (6) if I gave him a check for $10,000 that day, they would start the job within two weeks and that it would take about two weeks to complete.I signed the contract and gave him a check. At two weeks, when I had not heard from them, I tried calling them. They did not answer their phone, so I left a message. When they had not returned my call in two days, I called again, and their voice-mail box was full. Finally, a week later I reached them, and they told me they had been out of town. At that point, one week after the job was supposed to have started, I found out that, despite the fact that they had $10,000 of my money, they had not yet ordered the windows, or any of the other materials needed for my job. They then sent their foreman to take measurements for the windows and it was then that I found out that they could not replace my windows with the Andersen as per the contract, they had to use smaller sizes. According to the foreman, this would leave a 4" gap at the top of the windows inside the house that they could easily patch and replace the trim. Based on that, I agreed to the smaller windows. We were now one week past the promised completion date for the entire job, and nothing had been done. I demanded that they build the planters and install the fencing while we waited for the windows to be delivered. They did so, but then it was another month (May 18th) before they had someone install the windows. They sent a sub-contractor who just about destroyed the inside of my home. They ripped my custom blinds down off the windows along with the trim, leaving HUGE holes in the walls and cracks in the drywall that went all the way up to the ceiling. Rather than bringing a ladder into the house, they stood on my bed and dining room furniture. The cut wood inside my house. When they left at the end of the day, they did not even attempt to sweep up the sawdust and debris. When I arrived home from work, it looked like my home had been vandalized. Later, a DeckMaster employee told me that the windows had not been properly installed. Less than a month after installation, the three slider windows are not locking properly and the handle has fallen off one of the casement windows. I paid $4,000 for two ThermaTru exterior fiberglass doors, which was to include a factory applied stain. Instead, they applied the finish themselves, after the doors were installed, saying that they could do just as well. They installed the unfinished doors and then disappeared, leaving them exposed to the elements. When they finally applied the stain, they did it on rainy days, and the finish is rough and dull, nothing like the factory finish. The doors are not properly hung. I have to lean on the front door to close it and have to struggle to get it to lock. On May 21st, they told me that they had underpriced the job, and if I wanted it to be finished, I was going to have to give them another $16,000, to allow them to order all of the materials. I wrote the check on May 21st, and it then took them three weeks to patch the holes inside my house and replace the interior trim. With $26,000 of my money in hand, they sent workers in for two days, then pulled them out for a week., send them for another day and pulled them out for another week, etc. When I followed up with them for a status on my exterior materials, I found out that they did not order them until June 1st, ten days after the check cleared. On June 6th, they delivered part of the materials for the exterior. They sent a sub-contractor who said that he did not know how to install CertainTeed cedarboard siding. But that it didn't matter, because he could not have done the job anyway. They had not ordered all of the necessary materials. I do not know what these folks were doing with my money, but they were not using it to fund my job. From June 6th until the end of the month, I communicated with Deck Master several times. They kept promising to order the rest of the materials, but did not do so. After the boxes of siding had been sitting in my yard for three weeks, exposed to the elements and risk of theft, I finally gave up and hired a different contractor to complete the job. This was a nightmare from start to finish, and at the end of the day, Deck Master has a significant amount of my money that I did not owe them based on the part of the job they did.