Desperately seeking advice to have roofer finish before winter!

Hi all – we’ve been working with a roofer on a cornice restoration since May 1. Originally the job was to take 3 weeks; he quickly found some serious issues with the parapet wall which needed to be fixed and extended the total timeline to 6 weeks — fine.

6 weeks turned into 3+ months due to hiccups in ordering some materials, etc. – also fine; we know old houses always require more time than planned.

By end August (4 months in), we really started pushing him on a final finish date, especially since he then took 3 other jobs just on our street!

Every time we’ve pushed him he’s come up with a different reason as to why it’s taking so long, usually coming down to “I am a perfectionist and this is much more complicated than I thought; it is taking so much time b/c I’m doing such a good job.”) For the past few months, he’s been saying he just needs “a few more days.”

Las month, we even noted to him that it would be getting cold soon and we really needed him to finish up ASAP b/c we were concerned he’d soon tell us he had to stop for the winter and we absolutely did not want that to happen; we need him to finish this year. He said of course he would still work even when it’s cold and of course he’d finish this year.

Whaddya know, yesterday, he says it’s cold, he’s going to take down the scaffold and stop work for the winter; he’ll come back in March or April to finish up. So even tho he still says he only has a few more days’ work left on the project, he’ll make us wait 3-4 more months to finish it — and in the meantime we go through winter with an unfinished roof (it is FREEZING in our bedroom).

We obviously got upset and now he’s refusing to speak with us b/c he says we’ve been “rude” and have “hurt our feelings.” Yesterday was the very first day we ever even spoke to him with a raised voice – and it was for an obvious reason.

We stupidly paid him all but $1700 of what we owe so we have no financial recourse, and the scaffold alone is ~$5K, so hiring a different company at this point doesn’t make $ sense either.

Do we have ANY recourse here?? Any great ideas out there? Please, we are desperate ☹

Many thanks,
e

empathie00

in Roofing 8 years and 7 months ago

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mholesh | 8 years and 6 months ago

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Fire him and get yourself abother contractor. You have the right since he’s playing you. And yes you can work in the cold, addatives you can add into the mortar and cover using heating blankets.

empathie00 | 8 years and 6 months ago

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Thanks all – yes, he’s licensed, I will look into options from there. And yes, about $40K, it’s a very ornate cornice to say the least and was causing major leaks inside the house. We had to have the parapet wall rebuilt from scratch as well, so that adds up. I got probably 8 quotes for this and all were for $20K and up – even to $150K if you can believe that. Sigh.

Arkady | 8 years and 6 months ago

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Is he licensed? If so, there might be some legal recourse: I’d phone 311 to see if they can direct you to a city agency.

Augustiner | 8 years and 6 months ago

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I admire that you spend that kind of money on the cornice. I think 40k is up there in terms of price. That should get you the first class treatment and a totally new structure. A cornice is also not so much the place for perfectionism – it’s glimpsed at shortly at 40 ft distance at best.

empathie00 | 8 years and 6 months ago

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Thanks both…I guess I’m just really reluctant to give even more money to someone to bribe them to finish a job “only” 8.5 months behind schedule, but it seems we might not have any other choice.

The job requires a scaffold, and just the installation of a new one (i.e. by a different contractor) alone is about 6 times what we owe the current contractor, so that’s just really not an option …so maybe we really do have no choice but to “encourage” him with a bribe.

Sigh. Why are all contractors like this?? I can’t even imagine a situation where my boss asks me repeatedly for months to finish something she’s asked me to do, and which I’ve been paid to do, and then me saying I won’t finish it unless she gives me a bonus. Ridiculous! …yet totally, completely normal and expected in the land of contractors.

The other crazy part of this is that we had told him (back when he was only 4 months late) we would hire him to do the flat part of the roof in 2017 if he finished up with the current job well. And that’s like another $40K job…which he has totally now lost b/c he can’t get his so-called perfectionism under control. Again – sigh.

JorgeF | 8 years and 7 months ago

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I agree with the previous post offer him a bonus if he finishes before the end of the month. That might help. If he says no to that then you need to hire someone else or threaten to sue him.
He sounds like he has personality issues
Most people in this industry aren’t such candy asses that they get their feelings hurt by clients wanting a job done on time. You are the client you have the right to complain. You have the right to demand completion. Do you have an architect on the job. Have the architect try to push him if you can.
I would never hire anyone who calls themselves a perfectionist. Perfectionists do not get anything done and are the most inefficient and slowest people. I read a great article about a study on people who consider themselves perfectionists its quite relevant here because the conclusion was that perfectionists don’t ever finish anything.

Augustiner | 8 years and 7 months ago

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its not too cold to work.
Don’t let him take down the scaffolding.
Ask him what it takes to finish the project.
Offer some more money to finish now. Remember – its ALWAYS money.
Let him know you have a good relationship with the neighbors on your street he just started working for.
With new budget – agree on a tight timeline
Pay no further advances, pay everything on completion – make that part of the deal.

Calculate if you could get the job done by someone else for the same price. If yes, get someone else to take over.