If he is willing to offer you a discount for you being dissatisfied, that is one thing. But you can not withhold payment of the contract amount if he presses you for full payment. He owes you an industry standard usable bathroom. And he is owed the payment you agreed to pay him at project completion.

Industry standard quality is not above standard top notch upper end quality. Not unless those enhanced standards of quality were in the contract, the upcharge paid for, and were enforced as the project went along.

You should have got a different contractor after the first 2 screw ups .

The issue is you accepted the half assed stuff instead of stopping work when it appeared he was incompetent or lazy.

Generally the final payment is withheld pending inspection of items that haven't been quite finished.

You can of course attempt to negotiate by pointing out what was unsatisfactory but the issue remains as to why you would not have had him correct the bathtub when you first realized it was misaligned.

live-wire, I don't know what "industry standard" is. Maybe I've been spoiled by my other contractors who did everything right without my having to monitor their every move (except the one stoner I hired for a little job, but the results were not unexpected:)

Patricia, I should have! Every day I wish I'd severed the relationship right after it started. But a) we live in such a tight market that I couldn't expect to find anyone else to take over within a reasonable amount of time - it had already been demoed and I needed a bathroom! (it's our only one upstairs - the whole family shares it, Brady Bunch style:), b) when I complained to my architect, who'd recommended him, she was surprised and disbelieving talked me into keeping him because he's so wonderful, c) every time I'd say to my husband "that's it! I'm firing him" he'd show up the next day and be, yes, wonderful and charming and do a lot of work and I'd think, okay, it's going to happen! Then, it would turn out something was done wrong and had to be corrected and then he would take forever to come back and correct it and.... that was the pattern. I started thinking he might be bipolar - or a psychopath:) d) I was worried about how he'd react vis breaking the contract. I know he sued someone in the past (sleuthed it out).

Helen, see d) above. Re: the bathtub, I first realized it was crooked after the whole room had been tiled in and all the fixtures (trim) had been installed. It was imperceptible until we took the first showers and saw the water collecting there. Also, it was the plumber who installed it, but I figure the buck stops with the contractor regarding the work of his/her subs. Still, I couldn't bear to have the whole thing torn out. This is not a guest bathroom! It's our whole family's one bathroom (we have shower in the basement and a powder room downstairs, but my son started wetting the bed again because he was too afraid to go downstairs in the middle of the night, and I got the stomach flu once and had to run up and down the stairs all night - fun stuff like that).

ssdarb - Yes, oh my god yes a million times! The way he's treated me is not okay. Totally sexist and passive aggressive - and once kind of aggressive aggressive. I started feeling like I was locked in an abusive relationship - totally being gaslighted. But I just wanted it done! And I always thought the end was right around the corner, but it never was (see c) above).

One silver lining is that I'd originally had him come out to bid on a complicated kitchen addition project, but they (my husband and he) talked me into fixing up the old bathroom first - though I didn't care if it was crappy, myself - because we could do that before permitting the big one (that's how things roll around here - there were no structural changes or anything). So I got to experience his m.o. on this "baby" project rather than with the back half of my house ripped off. And I've sure learned a lot about how not to do things!

Anyway. Big sigh. Thanks for listening to my tale of woe. My friends are sick of it and I had to unload somewhere:)

Oh, re: paying him, I've gone through the invoices with his bookkeeper (did I mention the $6,700 in duplicate charges?) and some mysterious line items with him and I feel that what we owe him now is legit (he never charged for fixing his or his subs' mistakes). I'm going to give him a check today, when he comes over to fix the outlet he installed that isn't working - lol. but I'll nail him down on the very last things to be done. I made a super detailed punch list for him which he's actually working through (though I haven't seen him yet this week). Some of it I told him we'd just do ourselves, like finishing the painting).

I'm dealing directly with the cabinet maker now - no we don't have drawers or cabinet doors yet. I had to find him myself because my contractor told me all of a sudden in July that his cabinetmaker couldn't start the job until November (remember he'd been at this since April), and I've done the bulk of the communication with him, so I figure I shouldn't be paying a contractor markup on that. He didn't object.

As for the unfixable stuff, I'm just going to live with it (it's an old house - in a few years I'll be able to think of it as just part of the character of the place:), but I'm going to make sure he knows - once he's done and I don't have to deal with him in person - what I think of the workmanship he and his subs showed.

I don't have any advice, but I feel for you.

I am going through almost exactly the same issues with a remodel on our cottage right now. The only difference is that our contractor is charming and a yes man, in that he agrees with everything we say to our face, but then doesn't necessarily do it, or does half of it, or does a halfass job of it. We've had to check up on every little thing he does, his subs have screwed up many times. We are getting close to the end also and just can't wait until it is over.

We also have more work to be done, but most definitely will not be hiring him. We have learned many things during this project, most importantly of all, check references better, go to the building agency and ask if they have issues with the contractor, get every little thing to be done defined in the contract, and have a defined finish date for the project.

We are also considering hiring the local building inspector to do a final inspection for us before we pay the last payment to make sure everything is up to code.

Good luck with the rest of your project.

Speaking of permits???? misswaterlow- were permits pulled for your project?

Lisa_ why no permit from the get go? IF you call in an inspector, the first thing he will ask for is the permit. That is WHY you get permits- to get things inspected!!

Permits are not pulled everywhere for everything. Here, we only get permits for big dangerous things dealing with gas, with new construction, and the like. No one would ever look at the Assessment page at the City and try to pair up improvements with what they see when they look at the house, to see that they were properly permitted, as I have read is done elsewhere. Not done. For instance, I had a new electrical service panel put in, and we had it permitted and inspected. The new Fandolier the electrician hung in the family room in the same set of jobs? Not Permitted. Neither was the new electric cove heater we put in the office for supplemental heating.

If you have no idea what industry standards are, and no actual design work documenting any expectations, then you should not have entered into an expensive contract. You have an unenforceable contract for any type of quality control.

You could have received far worse work, and you would still have no recourse. Because you have no written standards of your expectations. You cannot even accurately term the work that you were given as a "mistake, without the proper documentation.

That's why design work happens on the front end. It produces documents that clarify exactly what should be expected from both parties. Those documents and industry standards should be incorporated into the contract.

Thanks live_wire_oak. I will definitely educate myself about industry standards before signing anything for our next project. This job was supposed to be a real no-brainer, and not particularly expensive, so I wasn't as careful as I would have been/will be with, say, our big downstairs project. I regret that, obviously.

Still, would things like even grout color need to be stipulated? Aren't there things that are taken for granted? I mean, if we didn't have "grout color shall be uniform" written down, it couldn't be called a mistake? And what if correcting a mistake would be a huge deal, like ripping out the tub and redoing all the tile? I can see the logic of why that's the only recourse a client has (assuming, it seems, we had language in the contract that could prove installing the tub on an imperceptible to the eye but very perceptible to the water slant is a mistake), but, still, it sucks when you just want the thing finished - and, most importantly, have lost confidence in the builder. I mean, at this point, I don't want him - or his subs - to do any more work on the thing.* Lol - kind of.

*I'm now working independently with the cabinetmaker who's going to do some of the final stuff the contractor was supposed to do, so that's nice:)

Matt, the two contractors we'd worked with before and with whom we're very friendly, were both scheduling over a year out, and a couple others we talked to were over two year out (we live in a crazy boomtown). If we'd known what we were getting into, we'd have waited for them.

The contractor we used, for the record, had great references, all five star reviews online (except for a vicious 1 star I found after the fact - it took sleuthing, which makes me suspicious). And, as I mentioned above, our architect, an awesome person, pleaded with us to keep him back when our only complaint was that he was slow to get the ball rolling. It's possible something's changed in his life, or with his staff, or maybe he's inexperienced with our type of project (I think he does more modern things). I don't chalk this up to not doing due diligence in selecting him, but to not being careful enough with the contract, being inexperienced in dealing with problems, and some plain old bad luck.

Documentation is your friend in this situation. Did you have a meeting with the contractor and come to any agreement of what he will and will not fix? We didn't have a perfect contract either but we were still able to collect damages after having to hire a new contractor to redo everything. If you have emails, texts, progress photos and such, even with a sort of weak contract, it's still possible to recover damages. If you think you are going to have to start over with a new contractor, ask the one you used before to put you on his calendar while you keep working to sort out the current situation. Maybe he will have a cancellation and be able to get to you in less than the 1 year you expect.

Matt, using the word "spoiled" in your response to the OP is another example of inappropriate language with the intent to bully, belittle or pressure the customer. It is not the contractor's role to spoil the customer but to complete the project in a competent, professional manner.

Wow. I swear, it seems that you have to be flat-out lucky to get a decent tradesperson or contractor these days. OP I am so sorry - hope you get things corrected to your satisfaction.

ssdarb, where you say "Matt, using the word "spoiled" in your response to the OP is another example of inappropriate language"

If you read the OP's post above, she wrote this:

"Maybe I've been spoiled by my other contractors who did everything right "

Matt probably should have used quotes so that it was clearer that he was quoting the OP.

It's entirely possible that the OP was being gaslighted by the unprofessional contractor. It happens. People start to believe the bullying. That said, with all the marginal work out there I agree you have to be very lucky to find someone to do a compentent job. It's frustrating.

ssdarb, gaslighting has been a term I've used a lot lately. It's a terrible experience. While I know that I'm very lucky, in the scheme of things, even to have a bathroom to remodel - and that this is only about a remodel and is not my life! - having someone with regular access to my home and personal space do this for so long has been upsetting.

I know there are those who have no patience for victimhood in this context, and think I should have stood up to him (though I'm not even sure what that would have looked like) or gotten rid of him from the get go, but the very nature of gaslighting is that you don't see it's happening until you're well into it. And, once you do, it can be confusing to sort out (this guy can turn on the charm and the work when he needs to), and, by then, you might feel trapped. Sadly, it's something that men in certain trades do to women clients a lot - whether they consciously mean to or not. I was very prepared and effective at buying a car on my own, and boy can I talk back to doctors, but apparently in this case I was a sitting duck. :-/

Looking forward to this being over, and to a time when "gaslight" is just the name of a film and not a personal experience for anyone:)

misswaterlow, it is so easy for this to happen to us. My mother lived in a mobile home, and when it comes to the trades, you have to find someone who is a "mobile home" contractor. She needed some moderate repair done - I forget which. The contractor was able to talk her into "leveling" her home again, despite her knowing that it was not needed. His bill ended up being just about the rest of her small nest-egg. She told me that she knew all this as she was agreeing to let him do it, but felt that she had no ability to fight his arguments. I tried complaining to consumer protection bureaus, senior citizen protection agencies, and so on, with no ability to even file a report - because she had agreed to it.

Sorry about your mom’s experience, Nancy:(