Yates Construction

We contracted Chris Yates (owner of Yates Construction) to build our privacy fence on March 26, 2021. We sent him pictures of what we would like and said he could build it with no problems. We paid him for the materials up-front with the understanding that labor would be paid upon completion. However, after a week the job was not fully complete and he had asked for the majority of the labor payment so he could pay his two helpers. Since I work with the owner's wife, I agreed and gave him the check. There were several issues along the way, main one being gaps in the pickets which I advised him of. He continued to say "it's the best we can do" and he attempted to narrow some of the gaps. Then the two gates on either side of the house he continued to have problems. He could not get them to line up with the fence properly and attempted a couple different styles of gate to address this. Once he decided on a single gate design, they still did not work as the support posts holding the gates moves under the weight of the gate. Main cause I believe is the posts holding the weight of the gates are not properly supported or are of the incorrect size for the weight of the gates. He said he would fix the gates and I offered a suggestion of a top support over the gates with an arch of some sort and sent him a YouTube video explaining what I meant as an example. He decided to go this route and built the arches, which were extremely large in scale and did not match the fence at all, and they were not mounted straight and wobbled. At this point the gates did function, but you could fit your hand through one of the gates and unlatch the gate...and the other gate was uneven with the fence. I immediately took down the arches and reached out to Mr. Yates....he is now insisting that we told him we were happy with his work and he is not offering any solutions to correct this matter and provide what was promised. Additionally, once 60% of the project was completed, Mr. Yates advised us he had never build this large of a fence nor this style of fence and he learned how to do it by watching videos on YouTube a couple days before he began the work. Many of the pickets in the fence are now bowing, inward and outward. After having to hire another contractor to fix these issues, we had to have the entire fence dismantled and rebuilt. Over half the posts had to be reset due to no concrete being put in the holes to secure them. We are now seeking legal recourse to recoup the cost of the repairs/rebuild.