Artisan Construction

Description of Work: I hired Darren Rager to build the house I had been planning for years. I had compiled pictures of how every room should look, bought the lot where the house was to be built, met with numerous builders to secure a bid and also see if they were even interested. I met Darren Rager during a Parade of Homes show in Stone Canyon in Owasso. He said he loved building custom houses, didn't build the same plan twice and was OCD to detail. His price was competitive, his spec home looked good and I thought I had found my builder. How wrong I was. As soon as the contract was signed, it was as if the pictures of the rooms didn't exist. From the framing stage on, there were mistakes made daily due to him not showing the subs how something was supposed to be built or look. Basically, a spec home was being built with my money funding the project as it was not going to be anything like it was supposed to look like. In addition, in the contract was a provision that he was supposed to provide lien waivers from the subs when they were paid. This is important as subs only have 3 months to file liens on the property once their job is completed. After asking Darren Rager nicely for several months for the lien waivers, I finally had to tell him that no more funds would be paid to him until waivers were produced. That resulted in him rushing at me thinking I would be intimidated I guess and when that didn't work, he jumped in his pickup, stormed off and that night, I received about 9 lien waivers. That wasn't all of them but at least I knew these 9 subs had been paid. Darren Rager was also caught lying as he stated the study entry could not be built a certain way per the picture he saw at inception. I thought it odd that he didn't say this when he saw the study entry picture when it was first shown to him so I met with the trim carpenter who stated the study entry could be built like the picture I showed him. Darren Rager didn't build the stair treads to code so it didn't pass inspection. His solution was to tack on strips to the end of each tread and they failed before the end of the build. If I ever sell the house, I imagine this will have to be revealed and it is the right thing to do anyway. The media room closet was supposed to be 9 foot in length and he built it 3 foot. Now there is no room to store CD's, DVD's, ect in the room. Worst of all, he moved a pipe in the HVAC plenum after inspection with the results being one room can be 62 degrees and another being 77 degrees. He never told me this pipe was moved after inspection. I hired a company to run a camera through the pipes and this was how the problem was found. This is going to have to be revealed to any prospective buyer too. His actions have decreased the value of my home as well. I finally had to basically take a leave of absence from my work and finish the house myself. There was no reason why there should have been this many problems. When I finally would show a sub a picture of how the room should look like, I was repeatedly asked why were they just now being shown the picture as it helped greatly. Numerous builders stated nobody had provided more information to assist in the building of the house than I. After Darren Rager refused to agree to follow the plans and pictures he was presented and signed a contract to do, I finished the house build and had to repair more of his mistakes. Over a year later, I am still having to deal with them. The one thing I should have done that I didn't do is demand to speak with his prior clients. If I was going to hire a house builder, I would require a list of at least the last 3 custom houses built so I could speak with each homeowner. I have a feeling that if I would have done that, that would have changed my mind about using him. He mentioned one time that a former client yelled at him and blamed it on the client. I have a feeling it wasn't the clients fault now that I have dealt with him.