here is my story, what do you think? my little brother from my fathers second marriage needed a car and my dad builds kitchen cabinets for a living and we were thinking up upgrading to a van so he talked us into upgrading our kitchen cabinets in exchange for the car. we started work on the cabinets, I did most of the work except spraying the finish while he worked on other peoples cabinets instead of helping on mine. I drove back and forth a couple times a week 30 miles for just about 4 months to his shop working on the cabinets. My brother is driving the car the whole time. My brother goes off to college and no longer needs the car so my dad wont help me finish the kitchen and says I owe him for the work he did and gives the car back with 20k more miles lots of stains on the seats and a flat tire. We suck it up and sell it on craigslist. He says the work he did do on the cabinets I can just consider even for use of the car. I dont have the cash and things pick up at work and dont have the time either so I let it sit for a year. I save up enough to start work on the cabinets again and he is really hurting for work so I told him I would pay him to finish the cabinets. He is happy and agrees to $15 an hour cash and says It will take about 40 hours labor to finish them and help me hang them if I gut the kitchen myself. When I go to the shop to see how everything is coming along I find out he used about 250-300 board ft of my maple that I paid for on other peoples kitchens and cuts up half of my drawer fronts that were already planed, sanded and routered ready to be stained sprayed and put on. He has no wood to finish my cabinets and I order 200 more board ft of maple. Two weeks later he says I owe him for 70 hours already and he's only about half done with what was left to build. This is what was left- 3 drawers 11 drawer fronts (4 to replace ones I had already made and he cut up) a pantry a file cabinet and one upper cabinet. chair rail stain and finish crown moulding spray 1 lower cabinet Here is what he did get done- 3 drawers Pantry with 5 pullouts which were 1" too wide for the pantry so he just cut one side off and slapped a board on them and glued a small strip of wood on the bottom to make it look like the bottom was dadoed into the side. stained and sprayed the crown moulding, sprayed one lower cabinet I had stained last year, and routered stained and sprayed a board for the chair rail. He cut the sides for the file cabinet 2" too short of what the plan said and now I need more plywood too. made the face frame for the file cabinet that is too short and has to be remade too. He wants to just raise it and put trim around it. I dont like the idea because the top two drawers are only 3" and should be 4" and I want it made to the correct hight and so my chair will fit under the counter that goes on top of it. 8 of the most horrid drawer fronts I have ever seen. I dont know why he even bothered to stain and spray them. I told him they looked horrible and needed to be redone and he told me he would, but said they were the best he could do. (all the ones I had made that he cut up were just fine they didnt chip out on me at all because I was careful and I'm not even a cabinet maker) Christmas was comeing up and I knew he was really tight on money so I paid him $750 for 50 of his hours to start with and he said he was going to keep working on the rest that was 4 weeks ago and he hasnt touched anything for my kitchen since. In the meantime I was off work from christmas through january 10th so I could install the kitchen and get everthing done. Its now the 16th, Im back to work and the kitchen has been ripped apart for almost 2 weeks now because I am doing everything myself because he is busy workin on other peoples kitchens. He said he was going to order the cabinet doors for me two weeks ago and let me know how much they were. I just found out today he didnt even call yet. My wife is due March 14th and I am really hoping I can get everything done before the baby gets here. I dont know what to do and wish I had never started this project, especially with my dad. If it was any other contractor I would have told him where to stick it and went somewhere else, but I'm kinda screwed because nobody else is going to want to finish my mess of a kitchen. I never thought my own dad would do this to me none the less do shoddy work for me. I doubt he would have given that type of work to one of his customers. I dont have anything in writing because I didnt think I needed it with my own dad. here are some pics-

thanx guys--i'll get this figured out one of these days. now i had asked about michael chiarello and he said no--that's when he told me the guys was big, so i asked about stellino or betalli and the slicked back hair/ponytail and he said no again. but terri might have something with johnny and damian...i'm not familiar with them but that doesn't mean dad isn't. and rocco isn't big/hefty enough to match up with what dad meant but gee joe, perhaps you are! dad just turned 91 and while i usually think my memory is more clear and straight-forward than his, that's not ALWAYS factual :) he's pretty clear on world events and syracuse university sports--that's for sure! sometimes i just have a difficult time making the connections in thinking that he does... and bean--you are right! i certainly could have asked him if this cook had his own show or was guesting... i was just so floored to hear him say there was something he wanted, i wasn't thinking as fast as i should have been! i appreciate the thoughts and will work to get the answer. and it's great to have these other names to offer up to him--thanx alot and keep them coming, please!

jelly, I can't really tell you anything about the rules for pulling permits. I am not sure if the building department requires you to show up for your permits or if you can send an authorized representative. Essentially, a Construction Manager has a limited power of attorney, so he is authorized to take actions in the homeowner's name, but whether the building department would allow this at all is something I can't answer. I am not even sure they care about the difference between a G.C. and a C.M., in the end construction is being overseen by someone qualified to do so. Furthermore, I am not even sure if they are legally different jobs. It is essentially just a contractually created differentiation. In reality the wording of the contract creates different rights and responsibilities, other than that there may be no distinction between the two. It might be easier to think of it as a third type of construction contract. General contractors can offer "fixed price" contracts, "cost plus" contracts or "Construction Manager" contracts. Again, I really am not sure how some of the legalities work. I know a little bit about agents and their fiduciary responsibilities because I am one. I have a little experience with construction projects, but I am by no means an expert on either. I was more or less trying to keep the OP from making a costly mistake by presenting him with another possibility.

New-beginning, I fully understand about the flooding. We were in the 5-mile wide eye of Hurricane Camille. Far more people died in Virginia from the flooding than died on the Mississippi Coast. But, officials allowed rebuilding of beachfront structures, only to watch Katrina plow through and devastate Gulfport, Biloxi, etc. again. We need to have those tough conversations about beachfront viability. I always said the only house I would ever have on the gulf or ocean would be a shack with used furniture and no priceless family mementos. In three weeks we suffered two hurricanes and the re-emergence of Ivan as a tropical storm, dumping feet of rain on our property. Because we had to “ load the site” with truckloads of fill, our house was an island surrounded by water, eight miles back from the Atlantic.