Brett Peterson Contractor

In May of 2013 I contacted Brett Peterson to discuss building a new shed on our property. At first he was really nice and we were impressed because he came over to our farm several times to view the building site and to help us find other people to work with. We already had an existing site where we wanted the new shed to be so he referred us to someone that could move the old one and do the excavation to get the site ready for building the new shed. In the beginning we were impressed with his involvement so we decided to hire him which turned out to be a huge mistake. We sat down, showed him our plans for the building and he wrote us up a contract. We had to give him a large down payment and then were to make 5 additional payments when he requested them to cover labor and materials. He said he went to Menards and got a contractors package and would order all of the supplies, stating it would be cheaper than I could purchase it for. My husband and I were very specific when we said we wanted this shed done during the summer because we were going to be doing additional work inside of it ourselves and didn't want to do it during the winter, Brett said it wouldn't be a problem, his guys would get it done but he would not put a start or end date on the contract t rained a lot in May so we had to wait until the ground was ready and then the other person started working on moving the old shed and once that was done he excavated the area and the concrete for the new shed was finally finished and dry the end of July. During this time Brett kept telling us his guys were ready to work, they were calling him, impatient with having to wait, they were ready etc. Due to this being such a large project we expected Brett to have a decent sized crew to get this done and boy, were we wrong! It turned out he only has one employee, his son in law who shows up for work when he feels the need and leaves whenever, mostly spending his time smoking and standing around while he is at work. Once the concrete was dry it was time for Brett to start his work on building the project and for awhile he had an extra son in law who was home from Colorado working on the shed along w/his other full time son in law, they started building the frame. Problems began almost immediately, my husband and I had drawn up a plan of the building using a computer program with the shed drawn to scale so that he would know where I wanted windows and doors, I noticed that he had put three doors in the wrong spot so I asked if he would move them. Brett became irritated when I pointed out the mistakes and said I was making changes to the plan and it would be extra in labor to move them, I said fine, I just wanted it to be done right before we moved on. I later decided I wanted a room to be a bit larger so I asked Brett if we could make some changes and he said fine, it would just cost extra for labor or materials and I agreed to that, appreciating that he would work with me as we moved on. We later decided one room was going to have a door that would get in the way so I suggested we add a pocket door instead and he said fine, get the door and I will return the other one and credit it back to your balance. I ordered the door, paid for it, picked it up and brought him home only to have Brett inform me he would charge me extra to install it even though he was originally going to install the other one, small things like that started to bother me and I never did get the money back for the other door that he had paid for with my money at Menards, he just returned it and kept the money. Another time I realized he ordered door knobs w/out asking me, I wanted levers so I asked that they be changed, again he told me to get my own levers and he would return the knobs and credit them back to me, again he returned the knobs and I never saw the money again, he kept it. After we got little details worked out they kept on with the frame and he hired another contractor, his other son in law had left so it was back to the two of them and they needed other help. The new man, Kim was very nice but was only available for six weeks, this made me nervous because I was very unimpressed with Brett's lack of a working crew so I asked if the building would be done, they both told me October 1st but nothing was ever written down. In late August it got hot and humid out so Brett informed me they wouldn't be working, I often had to hear about how he was 52, he had allergies, he didn't work in the heat so he took 12 straight days off and I didn't see him again until September 2nd. My husband and I had taken the day off to see what was all going to get done that day and Brett, his son in law, and the other guy showed up around 8 and were all done by 2, I could not believe it!! Here they had delayed our project by almost two weeks because it was too hot out and they couldn't even put in a full day's work or even make an attempt to work some extra hours to catch up for lost time. When they were getting ready to leave I asked Brett if he was having employee problems, he stated no and I asked where his crew of workers was? He said I knew all along he only had his son in law, which we didn't, and that I was impatient, they'd get it done but again he would not give me a date. As the outside steel was installed I started seeing more problems, it was dented, bowed out, some panels were sticking out over the others so much that I could stick my fingers in them, it looked terrible and I pointed it out to Brett. At first he said he didn't know what I was talking about but as I pointed at things he said due to the sun it had looked okay while being installed but now in different light he was mistakes and that they would fix them. He did fix a few but the shed to this day still had major problem areas, some of the panels need to be completely removed or replaced. I wasn't aware of it but Brett had hired someone else to do the roof, he said neither he or Kim would do them at their ages so someone else was going to. As time went on the roof wasn't getting done and I asked why, at first it was because the guy was busy, next the guy had gotten hurt, and next he was delayed to his injuries, etc. I asked if I could hire someone else, he said fine, so I asked how much the cost was in the bid and he said $2,800. I hired someone that charged me 1/3 of that price and while he was here he warned me about several mistakes that Brett was making with putting steel on the shed. I have a 12 foot lean to on the South side of the shed and the guy doing the roof started on the North end of the building, leaving the South side and lean to for last. One night he came over to tell me that Brett had build the lean to shed at the incorrect angle and the steel for the large roof was too short and the steel for the lean to was too long. We got Brett on speaker phone to explain it and he actually asked if we could cut the long parts off and piece them onto the areas where it was too short- a contractor wanted me to piece together a brand new roof! We said no and he was asked to change the angle of the lean to. After fixing the lean to the roof was put on and then Brett discovered the steel for the exterior wall beneath the lean to was now too short because he had changed the angle, this resulted in us needing to order new steel which delayed our project by another two weeks. Brett blamed the supplier for the wait on the steel, which I can understand, but never took responsibility for causing the entire problem by building the roof incorrectly to begin with. Another issue arose when he called me to tell me the steel for the interior walls was too short by 2". The inside walls were to be 10 feet high, and long story short, I called the store who supplies the steel and the man immediately told me if Brett had built the walls correctly the steel would have fit, it turned out Brett build the walls 10 feet 2 inches instead of 10 feet resulting in all of our steel being too short. His idea to fix it was to put a board over the gap, again a contractor trying to cover up his mistakes instead of fixing them. We ended up getting a steel trim piece to cover up the gaps and before Brett left he put it up on two walls and covered up about 2 inches of our heat vents, he didn't bother to cut out around them because that "wasn't in the bid" which was one of his favorite lines to say. The final straw came when my HVAC guy called and asked a question, I had asked if Brett was there and he said no, they had been for about 2 hours but left to start a new job- I was so upset, here this guy signs a contract with me, shows up for work when he feels like it, doesn't have a work crew, takes time off when it's too hot, makes constant mistakes and now starts a new job. This was mid October and our shed still wasn't near being finished so I called him to see what was going on. He said he was at a new job and when I asked him if he thought that was okay he responded that he had made a commitment to them and needed to be there. We got into an argument, I told him I could not believe his behavior, I was disappointed, thought he was unprofessional and was tired of his work and his attitude, he told me he'd take his stuff and leave and I said I'd sue him. Our talk ended with him saying we'd talk the next day. The next day I got home from work and the shed was empty, he took all his tools and even every last screw that I had paid for, my neighbor said she saw his son in law drive up that morning and left about 20 minutes later. I figured he had left but we didn't have all of the supplies to finish the shed and I had already paid for them all through Menards so I called to see what the status was with them, they explained that a month before Brett had canceled orders and had done it again the day we had the argument, so now I realized that a month before he had begun scamming me by returning product I paid for and keeping the money.