WARD PAINTING & PLUMBING

Although told to call first a worker showed up the first day without calling in advance and my 71 year old mother fell trying to get the dogs leashed when the worker stepped out of the truck when told not to. The mother needed hospitalized. From that moment on there was never any clear idea of when or who would show up to work. Mervin claimed skills he or his men did not have. They were very slow, left the job site a mess. Ward charged $1600 to seal and paint the roof- there are still leaks in the roof they never fixed and they billed me for extra paint. Ward spent over 18 hours on charging over $900 to tell me it wasn't a pipe leak but that the faucets leaked. This required buying two new faucets and he left with the $250 faucet he claimed did not work. The work was slopping, incomplete, and slow. There were never any records of how many men were working on any given day, what tasks they were performing or how long they worked. It was hard to determine what work was actually being performed. They billed me for $50 an hour for one guy who all I could tell was he was picking up old siding and putting it in a pile for later handling. I guess Ward expected me to pay another $50 an hour for moving the siding to the disposal site. Instead I spent a Sunday cleaning up the job site behind them. Before being fired, I paid a total of $6,221- I ended up with part of the foundation closed in by tacking up plywood (not code), about 300 square feet of siding that does not match the rest of the house in texture or measurement. Also, many pieces of siding were left missing. Although questioned about leaving insulation uncovered and exposed to rain before they left the job site one day- they left anyway and we preceded to have rain for the next 3 days. They closed in the wet insulation anyway. Before building the porch they wanted to remove a transom window from over the door because they did not know how to build the porch over the transom (this even though they were hired because they claimed to have the skills.) They had to be instructed to put flashing above a window and to cover the new sewer clean out pipe. When the "skilled" carpenter stated he didn't know how to fix the wood floor (it took me 5 minutes to find a "This Old House" instruction episode) I knew I had more trouble with a capital $$$$ coming my way. It also took two men over 8 hours to lay 40 cinder blocks. My father was a general contractor who started life as a professional mason, I have watched him lay 400 blocks in less than half the time. I know because as a kid my job was to carry the blocks for him to lay. No skills, slow, messy and padding their time. The neighbor said they planned to be on the job all summer for work that should have taken 1 week at the most. Never pay anyone by the hour --even if the neighbor recommends the worker as honest.