Not getting along w GC - can I hire my own flooring sub during the project?

I’m having a hard time getting along with my GC and we are 2/3 of the way done w our renovation project (3 story townhouse). He’s been a big jerk the last few months — he’s refused to admit his mistakes, he charges a super high rate for every Change Order, and he’s stopped showing up to our site meetings with the architect, and he’s extremely rude in every email to the point where I am avoiding him. That said, I do hope we can get along for the next couple of months until the project is done, because I just want it to be OVER and move in….

We are having a particularly hard time agreeing on the best way to do the floors, and without the floors we can’t move forward with installing the kitchens, baseboard trim, doors etc…

Rather than give in to him and his rip-off change order prices, I’m at the point where I’m wondering if I can just hire my own flooring guy to do the floors, and take that out of the GC’s scope. He’s saying that I cannot do that due to insurance reasons, ie he does not want to have another contractor on site during the project since the whole pro ject is under his insurance. Is this correct? He did mention his insurance is only on the weekdays… what if I were to hire someone on the weekends? Would that be legal? Or what if his guys take a break for a couple of weeks while I have the flooring guy come in? Is that my right or not? Anyone else out there done this before?

And aside from the legality, I don’t want to piss him off TOO much, as I don’t want him to walk off the project or try to screw me over in other ways.

Any advice?

Flooring seems a weird issue to fight about.
The ‘best way’ is to pick a flooring material, lay it on a solid and straight subfloor, that’s that.
The thickness of the material should have been considered at the planning stage already.

This sounds exactly like my former contractor. Do you have a contract? I was in the same boat but ended up having to fire. I started ignoring the insurance excuse – it’s just a way to bully you.

I really feel for you. I went through this and it was one of the lowest points of my life – I was so depressed I didn’t know how I would get out of the situation. The relief I felt after I fired them was immense. You will realize that no one should be treating you this way and good people won’t.

op called me and i told her that to deal with this contractor she has to “grow a pair”. ask her, that is what i told her.

that must be the best advice i ever gave anyone. i post it and before i turn from the computer someone has liked it. its true.

Thanks Steve and Jane, it was I who liked your post Steve. 🙂

@augustiner the thing we’re arguing in terms of flooring is that the GC chose masonite (sort of like a thick cardboard substance) as the underlayment for a new parquet, which I confirmed is not standard after talking to multiple flooring contractors, the parquet flooring salesman and even 3 glue companies… Everyone says the proper substrate for parquet is 1/4″ plywood. But rather than admit his mistake the GC wants to charge me thousands of dollars to remove the masonite… and doing so may cause irreparable damage to the subfloor. The best path forward I think is to put plywood over the masonite, which kind of makes the floor too high (and might interfere with the pocket doors Steve fixed for me (thank you!) Or I suppose I could let him install the parquet on the masonite if he guarantees it’s going to last for 10 years (can one do this?)

But back to the broader issue… The hardest part is that I am doing this renovation on my own as my husband feels it is too stressful for him to be involved (he’s been dealing with a stress/burnout situation from his job for many months now)… Often in this project it has been me, my architect and my GC together and the GC and architect sort of gang up on me and bully me… I’ve never really experienced anything like it before but it is horrible. And I feel like I can’t fire either of them because we are so close to finishing the job and we are desperate to be finished…

What I’m predicting is about to happen at our next meeting is that GC is going to say I can’t hire my own flooring sub, due to insurance reasons, and then architect is going to back him up. Then I’ll be forced to wait until the entire project is over from the GC’s standpoint to bring in my own flooring guy… I would instead rather do it on the weekend or when the GC is not there…

So does anyone know if this is true, that I can’t bring in additional handymen/subs due to my GC’s insurance not allowing it? Or is that BS?

BS. That’s why I asked you if you had a contract that clarifies. Either way you are covered as long as the subs are insured which they usually are. Also your architect is supposed to be working on your behalf not against you. This doesn’t sound normal. If you don’t want to fight with the GC then tell them you want them to stop work for a week and finish the flooring. Just fyi the desperation to finish with a bad contractor is the homeowner’s downfall. A lawyer once told me he’s seen this situation multiple times and it’s way better to cut losses and move on. Who knows what else is lurking besides masonite under things??

I’ve only seen and heard of plywood. However according to this, masonite seems acceptable. Unless I am misreading. https://homesteady.com/info-8722037-installation-masonite-hardboard-floors.html

Thank you, Jane… yes the architect is making it worse not better but frequently siding with him and refusing to get involved in critiquing his methods and materials, which leaves me as the only person really reviewing what he’s doing.

I will check our original contract and see if it specifies anything. And yes I would imagine the flooring person is insured but I will check… and of course I have my own homeowner’s insurance as well, if that counts?

The reason I’m afraid to cut ties with him is that we did our electrical and plumbing and those things are not totally done yet, so I’d imagine it would be a nightmare to try to finsh those jobs with new contractors when they’re 75% done. Or if I fire GC, can his electrical, plumbing and HVAC subs keep working since they have their own permits they took out for the project?

Re masonite, that’s the only positive thing I’ve seen about masonite in about a month of doing research, aside from on the Masonite website itself… The issue is that Masonite can absorb moisture very well and so it turns to “oatmeal” as one guy put it… and the parquet pops off after a while. Also Masonite is very smooth as it contains resins and so the glue won’t stick to it. None of the 3 glue manufacturers I called would guarantee that their products would work on Masonite and said that the proper substrate was plywood.

The plumber, hvac and electrician can continue working as long as you are comfortable with them. I don’t believe your home insurance is relevant in this case. Yes moisture is an issue but I assume there has to be some kind of liquid moisture barrier/sealer you may be able to put over it. Has the masonite already been adhered? (Your contractor sounds just like mine. He’d talk back to me whenever I’d question his methods.)

When masonite gets real wet, it swells to like 4 times, no like 6 times is original thickness and looks like dark oatmeal and will never go back.

Ideally she can remove and start over but if that’s not the case have to come up with some other alternative. The contractor seems to be ignorant which is indicative that there may be other problems in the work. Squibsie, how did you find the GC?.

Ok, I understand it is emotionally exhausting, and absolutely not fun to deal with contractors who try to shift blame and architects (haven’t met a good one yet)
But just get it to the finish line as fast as possible and be done with it.

Realistically, if you have the amount of moisture seeping into the floor that will swell up the floor, e.g. if your sprinkler goes off, you’re going to need to replace the floor and much more anyway..

But to get a moisture barrier you could lay a thin layer of plywood over it. I’ve just used revolutionply from Lowe’s under laminate. It’s only 5 millimeter thick and costs $14 for a 4×8 sheet.
On the positive side, using several layers of subfloor with different densities helps with noise mitigation between floors 🙂

The op is not looking necessarily for a moisture barrier. The issue is now something else. For whatever reason the contractor laid masonite. Even with plywood over this, if they have a leak that makes its way to the masonite – and in the 100 yr lifetime of that floor, this is likely- the masonite will swell and lift the floor.

These kind of contractors are not thinking 5 and ten and twenty years out. Most of them do not have that ability.

@Jane – thanks for commiserating, I found my GC because he was recommended to me by an architect who is the husband of an acquaintance… I checked out GC’s reviews online (on Park Slope Parents website, where you have to be a member to post so I think the reviews were real) and they were all quite positive. He started off OK and most of his works on my house so far seems fine, but when I sometimes questioned his methods he got really frustrated and irritated. And unfortunately my architect turned out to be more of an interior deocorator type and doesn’t want to get involved in these discussions with him about methods and materials, she thinks I should trust him more. Her main concern on this whole project so far has been (I’m not kidding) how the tile is going to align in the bathrooms… where as major issues like moisture penetration in the walls and other more fundamental stuff she has no interest or clue.

@Steve, yes exactly… I saw some figure online that masonite absorbs like 50 (or some high number)% of moisture compared with like 5% for plywood. Since masonite is already glued down (and 2 different flooring guys told me you might ruin the subfloor if we try to pull it up) our current idea is to put 1/4″ ply over the masonite…

@augustiner thx for the tip, I will look that up. Yes with all the layers hopefully that will add to the soundproofing a teeny bit!

Thanks for sharing. I still feel terrible for you. I was in the same situation and know how demoralizing it is. Masonite can be sealed which is a solution especially if it is too late to remove it. Augustiner’s suggestion of a thin layer seems viable.

Have you had a flooring company price removal? In this situation might be worth removing before you put the floor down and have a setback.