Wally Amish Carpenter

I had asked for a copper roof for my porch and he said he could do it, and came in under the other contractors budget. He was a very friendly and seemingly knowledgable man, and I went with his quote. He ripped the roof off and disappeared leaving the house open to the incoming hurricane. When he returned he proceeded to roof both the porch and the bay window. The copper he put on was like tin foil, you could see the rafters through it, and it was appalling. Even with my scant knowledge of roofing, I knew this was wrong. I asked for him to replace it with the material he had shown me when he first quoted the job. He disappeared for a while, and when he returned used a different material. He did not use the appropriate flashing and the roof is completely wrong and letting in water. I have to remove it, and it is a complete nightmare. I was charged for the 'extra' material, all in all, it was a nightmare. A contractor this year looked at the job and shook his head..I have to redo the entire job.

Things initially seemed fine. As time went on and on, the job got sloppier and slower. The front porch took forever...and it is STILL not completed. I am not a carpenter or woodworker so I had three seperate contractors look at the semi-completed porch. They pointed out a lot of things that were wrong. The wood was laid wrong (suppose to be grain side down), cracked/flawed wood was used on front sections, I had the porch done in treated wood but there were sections not done in treated wood, missing trim, caulk all over the place and just generally bad construction applications. Being a lay person, I would have never known a lot of this. At any rate, he promised to fix what he could, but still has not done so. He has been paid in full (mistake!) and my front porch is not completed. In the mean time, we had him start the back porch. He got his workers to do it because he was working elsewhere. They did it wrong. Wally even admits it is wrong. Oh, it is also unfinished. He wanted to rebuild it correctly but wanted me to buy the wood to do so. Well, I already spents thousands of dollars on lumber so why would I buy wood to fix their mistakes? The OLD torn down porch is still sitting in back yard. He never removed it as promised. We also agreed on the estimate for the sun porch gingerbread trim but he has never produced it, even though he stated that it was completed. We also agreed on the basement stairs but he never started that project. I ended up getting someone else to build those. Also, at the time Wally and his crew was working on our porch, we were measuring and ordering custom windows for our house. Wally stated that he had installed these windows many times and wanted the job of measuring and installing our windows. The job would produce about $4000 in income. He started installing the windows and it quickly became apparant that they did not know what they were doing. They ended up messing six window installations up. I told them to stop. I paid them for those windows but ended up having to get someone to not only re-install the windows they put in but install all the other windows. He also became untrustworthy in my opinion. He would change prices, inflate estimates, his one son that work with him got nasty with us, etc. Also, be prepared for issues associated with being Amish. There were a lot of days where they did not show-up because of transportation issues, phone issues, etc. I guess this goes with the territory. All in all, we ended up feeling betrayed and very disappointed. Over the long period of time they worked here, we trated them with both respect and genuine caring but felt that was eventually used against us as we were taken advantage of. Sad. We are in the process of getting someone else to FIX and FINISH what they started.

Every thing went great from start to finish couldn't ask for a better person.

Ensure detailed measurements are taken of the work required and that drawings are submitted for approval.

These people respected my house as if it were their own, They were professional all the way from start to finish. even when I changed a few things in the middle the job other contractors charged me extra for that and they didn't. I need more work done to my house and I will call them again. They are the best.