John The Handyman

Description of Work: I asked Jon to build me a deck. His price was the primary driving factor in this decision. After talking and emailing with him a few times, I decided to hire him for the project. During the construction, I noticed he attached a ledger board to my brick veneer that has no structural attachment to my actual house. Real ledgers attach to structural members of your house. I asked him why the ledger board was necessary and he told me "it has to be attached to something." This is not true. A free standing deck can butt up to a house without any attachment to the house. I didn't think he would make this a structural member so I didn't think any more about it until he finished. I went under the deck and he had placed a floor joist directly on the ledger that is screwed into my brick veneer. It is not using the deck structure as its support. He repeated the flaw on the outside of the deck by placing another floor joist on top of a ledger instead of the main support beams. He built a really beefy support structure, but did not use it for 2 floor joists. The railing he installed on the stairs did not follow the slope of the stairs and did not meet building code height. I am in the process of fixing it myself. I asked him to install hurricane straps and he didn't use all of the holes in the strap as required. I emailed him regarding the top paragraph about the ledger. He responded assuring me that the materials used meet building codes. I responded with a counterpoint from the same code book regarding his design decisions and he did not respond. I know that brick veneer cannot be used to support anything reliably. I also know that if you build beams to support floor joists you should use them. I might be wrong, but I can't find an example on the contrary.

Description of Work: I hired John to do a lot of work for me.