Suzieque thanks. Sad and frustrated because, 3 years after the dishonest contractors caused all the damage, I have still been unable to get my house restored to the safe, comfortable condition it was before the dishonest contractors destroyed it. In addition to destroying the insulation and vapor barrier while demolishing the wrong part of the house, the dishonest contractors caused it to rain and snow directly into the house for over 2 years. I called the insurance company for the contractor who was bidding (and still adding to the cost of the bid) $40,000+ to repair the damage), and his insurance company informed me that his insurance policy did not cover the work that he was bidding to do on my house. He did not attempt to contact me again after that. The guy who quoted $50,000-$70,000 to repair the damage done by the dishonest contractor said that he would send me a "detailed, itemized proposal" which turned out to be a 2-line text that he sent to me many months later, and when I did not respond within a half hour, he texted again "no answer" and then later said "you can't afford us," which, I guess, was his way of saying "we don't have time to help you". The reason I am guessing this is the case is that the woman who recommended him as being the best and only contractor that she can trust also informed me that after he repaired her house, he said he would do her son's house, but 2 years later he still hasn't done her son's house. So I survived 2 winters paying exorbitant heating costs while living in the 2 "warmest" rooms of the house. I was able to heat the "warm" rooms to about 60 degrees and the upstairs was 28 degrees, since the contractors destroyed all the previously-functional insulation as they were causing it to rain and snow directly into my attic spaces, and onto the drywall ceilings of the finished upstairs rooms. It wasn't until the following summer that I was able to finally find someone willing to do "emergency" patching of all the holes that the dishonest contractor put into the roof. . The next fall and winter I hired a neighbor to help me remove all the water-damaged materials from the upstairs and begin installing good baffles and real insulation, but, after removing the water-damaged materials, we had to wait for the entire underside of the roof, most of the attic spaces, and other parts of the house as well, to get 2 different commercial mold-killing treatments professionally applied before we could start re-doing the baffles and new insulation. This mold remediation was not completed until the end of the 3rd winter that the damage done by the dishonest contractors forced me to live in an unsafe, water-damaged house. And, of course, the work that I originally hired the dishonest contractors do to has still never been done, because repairing the damage that they caused to my house became far more urgent. I am paying for all of this out of my own pocket, since the dishonest contractors refuse to repair any of the substantial damage that they caused to the house. after having already robbed me of close to $15,000. (I don't even want to get into what they did to the back of the house after I had forbidden them to touch the back of the house.) It wasn't until January and February of the 3rd winter that I finally had almost enough insulation replaced for my house to begin to retain most of the heat from the furnace. Then the primary employer of my neighbor that I had been paying to help me do this after he finished work at his "day job" changed his work situation so that he was no longer able to help me, so I am still trying to find someone to finish installing insulation in the places I can't get to (I am 70 years old, and no longer thin enough or flexible enough to fit through small openings). The entire upstairs of my house (more than half of the living space) is still unusable, as it still requires the insulation to be completed before prepping for replacing the drywall can begin, and I have no idea of how long the "patches" to the holes on the roof will last, since they didn't replace any of the wood that the dishonest contractors removed from those areas of the roof-- they only "patched" them with was ice/water barrier and shingles, And there are still large areas of the roof that the dishonest contractor ought to have covered with ice/water barrier but did not. Those areas are still not covered with ice/water barrier.

I was lucky to find a General Contractor for my first kitchen remodel who is qualified to do all of the basic trades. He is a perfectionist. He knows his limits and will tell me that I need to hire someone to do something he cannot handle. He has moved walls, put in a skylight, added electrical circuits, wired new cooktop and downdraft fan that he installed, removed soffitts, added a soffitt elsewhere, moved a load-bearing opening, installed bath fan where none had been, including adding the roof vent for it, installed front door systems and patio door, designed and installed front ramp, installed flooring, kitchen cabinets, kitchen appliances, interior doors, designed and created a six-step stairway, and created a dog-washing station based on my design. Since I met Jim in 2003, he has done almost all of the work I have needed done in the two houses I have owned. He is licensed and insured. I realize that I was lucky to find someone who is qualified to do so many different kinds of work. Not many are like this. But they do exist. Jim works mostly on his own, though he hires assistants when he needs them. On occasion, he hires his kids when they are not in school. Once, when he was doing my first backsplash, and I was using a glass tile as the secondary tile in a pinwheel pattern, I assisted by back-buttering the glass tiles and handing them to him to be placed. Jim sweeps up his work area at the end of each day. His van has built-in storage for all of his tools and he can easily find anything that he needs. "Meticulous" may be his middle name! I knew I had the right guy to work with me when I was interviewing him and he listened to my ideas for my first kitchen and pulled out his tape rule to measure and said, "Yeah, I think that will work here." He added his own ideas, told me "no" when I needed to hear it, and simply talked to me like a person instead of giving me that condescending treatment that so many men give to women when talking about technical or mechanical things. I knew I could work with him from the first interview. I was referred to him by asking for recommendations at the contractor's desk at the local lumber supplier. I was looking at kitchen cabinets there, so went to the desk and asked for some recommendations of contractors who seemed to know what they were doing. Jim has been working on a commercial building for the past three years. He says that he hated the boring work, but that he could not turn down the good pay. I have been waiting for him to be free to do my bathroom gut and remodel. I won't have anybody else if I can have Jim by waiting!

Well I disagree ^. We built a custom home and after looking at all the local cabinet companies decided Ikea was best for what we wanted. Our trim guy had put Ikea Cabinets together before and said it wasn't a problem. He was able to adjust a few things and reinforce in some places he felt was necessary. He is a true craftsman and it turned out great. We are definitely not DIYers. Juneknow, I just can't see how you can make the comments you do sometimes. Do you enjoy it?

We found a neighbor using the same contractor - supposedly our neighbor “2 houses down” on the OTHER end of the road had asked for a quote and the guys (without telling their supervisor about the additional prospective job) decided to just go forward with the work behind his back... so our neighbors who had inquired about a quote were a bit relieved they got the wrong house since that isn’t what they were wanting. But long story short, we got in contact with the guy in charge and he came out and fixed it after we told him we had filed a police report... so all good now thankfully! Thanks everyone :)