Termination of a contract generally involves a consultation with an attorney regarding the specifics of the contract and the owner's obligations. I'm not an attorney and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so please don't construe my two cents as legal advice.

Since the homeowner was providing all materials, the question regarding payment should be with respect to the pro-rata portion of the contractor's labor only. I'd ask the contractor for a record of the number of manhours worked compared with the total manhours estimated for the complete contract scope of work. With that information you can determine what percentage of the contract price has been "earned" by the contractor.

That fails to compensate Jason for his extra time and risk. This is much more about a position of strength than legalities.

@Charles Ross Homes, luckily I installed security cameras at her house last year (after her husband died), so I can go back and see exactly how much time they've spent at the house. I can't see inside so I don't know how much time was spent working versus with their feet up, but it's better than just taking their word for it.

I seriously doubt that it gets to that point, though. They wouldn't have the money to take it to court or anything, and publicizing this level of poor workmanship would definitely put them out of business. I'm not trying to cheat them, though, I just want to make sure that they're fairly paid for the work they've done without either of us feeling ripped off.

We really needed everything done before it gets cold, because at this point half of the house has exposed cinder block (and electrical wires) with no insulation at all! I'm very concerned that I'm not going to be able to find a new contractor that can start work immediately and be done in a month, so I might have to drop my own responsibilities and do it myself >:-(

Some of the question depends on your state and its licensing requirements. In my state there is a fair chance the answer is $10,000, so another $6,000.

There are a few factors from a legal standpoint that are against you. First, it is difficult to fire someone without giving them a chance to correct. You really need to give them notice of issues and a chance to solve the issues. You can't breach someone over a $60 can of paint, it just isn't material.

They are under no obligation to be there for any amount of time per day nor any amount of time per week so long as the job is completed in a reasonable time frame. Although I agree it is not going to be and they are behind you are not yet beyond a reasonable time frame.

Finally, you are paying way under market rates for this anywhere in the U.S. There is a concept in contracts that work and quality shall be commiserate with other work and quality at that price point.

Having said that, I would just fire them and put the ball in their court just being aware they might win in court, but playing odds it isn't going to end up there.

Guys that work 3-4 hours a day 3-4 days a week don't sue anyone.

Guys that work 3-4 hours a day 3-4 days a week don't sue anyone.

Or they are the guys that sue everyone...

That's a 100K job. They’ve lost money already. They do not want to lose more by continuing to work for 10 cents on the dollar. They’ll go quietly if you pay them a few more thousand.

@Outland Construction, I should have probably mentioned:

1. The tax appraisal for this house is $50,000

2. Median income for my area is $23,989

3. According to Zillow, the average home value in my area is $155,783 (up 8.4% this year, and up from $95k in 2013)

3. The guy and his girlfriend used to live in a dilapidated 1970s single wide next door to my girlfriend's mom, but were kicked out for reasons unknown. Now they live in a house rent-free in exchange for doing repairs on the house, but they mentioned that they're about to get kicked out. They talked about buying my girlfriend's mom's RV to live in for awhile.

There's no such thing as a $100,000 renovation in my area, you could build a whole new house for that :-)

@bry911, I've been self employed for my entire life, too, and the phrase I use is, "the sting of poor quality lasts a lot longer than the sweetness of a low price" :-)

The original job was just to replace rotted subfloor and the linoleum floor, but they were the ones that suggested replacing all of the walls, too, within her budget. I was concerned that they had grossly underestimated the amount of time it would take, which is why I insisted on paying per-contract instead of hourly.

But I also know the type: they start out great, but quickly lose interest and start showing up at 11, take a smoke break at 11:30, a 1-hour lunch break from 12 to 1, another smoke break at 1:30, then peel off at around 3.

I had a friend that contracted to have a house built (a $250,000 quote) and it was supposed to be done in 3-4 months. It ended up taking 3-4 YEARS! He came at Thanksgiving the second year to check on progress and found a note on the door that they had stopped working because it was deer hunting season! Which, in my area, is September through January. He said that it looked like they hadn't touched it in months.

By time it was over, it cost a little over $400,000.

Your home value and lack of adequate budget are irrelevant to the national average cost of that scope of professional skilled labor. You've already snookered yourself once. You’ve seen what it costs to hire that unlicensed joke. If you go back for seconds on that front, you’re going to be even worse off with a more torn up house and more money lost. You need to trim that list extensively or learn to DIY if you’re going to do anything at all.

Would the rest of you agree that this is a $100,000 job?

Realistically, we're talking about:

* removing 56 sheets of paneling, installing insulation board, then replacing them with 56 sheets of drywall. The ceiling is exactly 8' tall, so the only cutting is around outlets, windows, doors, and corners.

* building a 12x8' wall and an adjoining 7x8' wall (to create the new bedroom), an 8x8' wall (to divide the bathroom), then a 2x8' wall and an adjoining 6x8' wall (for the closet).

* removing linoleum floor (which was done on day one so I don't think it was too hard), replacing maybe 10 4x8 sheets of subfloor, and installing the snap-together floating floor.

* removing a half wall that's not load bearing.

* removing 1000 sq.ft of popcorn ceiling.

* mudding, sanding, and painting the new drywall and ceiling.

Using this calculator, the labor for removing the paneling and installing the new drywall is $1600 and should take about 20 hours:

https://www.homewyse.com/services/cost_to_install_drywall.html

In my area it would not be $100,000 in labor, but it would be far more than $10,000 in labor and I live in a low cost of living area.

56 sheets of drywall is 4 × 8 × 56 square feet. I think that is 1,792 square feet. It should take a week or two for that (realistically) and cost about $4,000 - $5,000 in labor in my area. I used to be able to get drywall done at $1.50 per sq.ft., now it is closer to $2.50.

Realistically we are talking about a full on gut remodel. You are redoing floors, walls, and ceilings.

56 sheets of drywall is 4 × 8 × 56 square feet. I think that is 1,792 square feet.

You're right, I was just going by the square footage of the house.

I don't know how reliable the Homewyse calculator is, but it says that the cost in my area for 1,792 sq.ft would be $1,894 - 2,296 ($1.06 - 1.28 /sq.ft).

Using that calculator, it looks like the value of the work they've done so far is closer to $1800 :-O

BUT!! I talked to a contractor on a local site yesterday, and he said that right now they're in very high demand and he wouldn't be able to get to it for at least 3-4 months. So there's a decent chance that this is why my guy is phoning it in: he could be juggling multiple contracts, and focusing on one that's paying more.

Realistically we are talking about a full on gut remodel. You are redoing floors, walls, and ceilings.

Except for framing, electrical, and plumbing. And refinishing the ceilings, not replacing. But otherwise, yeah, pretty much!

"I don't know how reliable the Homewyse calculator is, but it says that the cost in my area for 1,792 sq.ft would be $1,894 - 2,296 ($1.06 - 1.28 /sq.ft)."

Left field and does people a complete disservice as it does not take anything into consideration other than what they it to tell you.

@millworkman Couldn't agree with you more, this calculator or websites providing costs for the various projects for different regions, or remodeling books,i.e "homeowner project costs for 2021" or something like this... is nothing more than misleading information.

@Jason, zone 7A, near Greensboro NC

I don't know what you getting at... They gave you a price of 10k to do whatever they agreed to do, they have been there about 2 months, you see a few items that need to be touched or fixed... Let them finish everything, do a walkthrough, and have them address all your concerns.

If they don't, you do what has to be done the legit way.

If you found a construction calculator after you accepted the price that does some "cockamamie" pricing, you don't have a leg to stand on if this becomes a legal matter. If you want to find that price and go by that, you should have done more legwork and gotten more estimates and compared apples to apples, and picked the number that suits you better.

Give them a chance to complete everything and see the final outcome.

Good luck

I once contacted one of these lead sites when I needed some work done to a rental property, I am not allowed to mention the name but it seems pertinent to this discussion. They sent someone who worked up a great bid that was pretty much spot on to their estimator. I knew it was too good to be true but since I was assured of credentials by the service I moved forward. I would tell you more about the experience, but I am barred from disclosing the name of the site, the specifics of my complaint, the money I received, and other pertinent information by the terms of our settlement agreement.

I will say, that I learned the hard way not to trust these estimator sites. Many of their local pros report super low numbers or rarely update them in order to get in your home. Once they have your signature on the contract, they simply find ways to make up the difference.

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Drywall is one of the few things that I will not touch and even having regular work for a drywaller, in an area that is comparable for cost of living to the OP, I can't get it done for near that amount of money.

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@Jason, zone 7A, near Greensboro NC - I am a real estate investor who is in an area that seems economically similar to your area. I can usually get work done a lot cheaper than people here are quoting because I am just doing more of it and in an area that is much cheaper than most. However, your quote seems way too good to be true to me. To remove popcorn ceiling, remove a wall or two, construct a few new walls, redo flooring, remove paneling, insulate and re-drywall a house that is described as the "floor literally falling in" I would jump at a bid that was double what yours was.

Having said that, as to your other assertion, the amount that you owe him is not quite so cut and clear. The standard for a breaching party is to put the other party in the position they would be in if the breach hadn't occurred. So if you fire a contractor who hasn't otherwise breached you typically owe the full amount of his profit and overhead but not materials.

It isn't about the work he has done, it is about the profit he has foregone. The legal assumption is that the contractor would have found other work had he not agreed to your work and therefore if you fire him without cause you are responsible for that deficit created by your firing him without cause. What is cause and what isn't cause is another matter altogether.

Also I will note that North Carolina has a handyman exception to contractor licensing requirements and so, assuming you are in North Carolina, a contractor's license is not required for jobs costing less than $30,000.

I don't know what you getting at... They gave you a price of 10k to do whatever they agreed to do, they have been there about 2 months, you see a few items that need to be touched or fixed... Let them finish everything, do a walkthrough, and have them address all your concerns.

@GN Builders L.L.C, I really just found the calculator since @Outland Construction said that it was a $100,000 job. The calculator's high-end estimate was very close to the quote I was given, so it feels like, at the very least, we're in the same ballpark. It's actually so close that I suspect they may have used the same calculator (or a very similar one) to create the quote.

At this point, though, the biggest concern is that they said they'd be done in a few weeks! They didn't give an exact date, but we're at 7 weeks and they're less than 1/6th done (and haven't started the harder parts). We really needed it done before it got cold, but at the rate they're going I doubt that they'll be finished this year.

The house has electric baseboard heat, which we disconnected in the beginning so that they could remove the paneling. We're about a month away from her needing heat at night, so once that happens we're going to have to put her in a temporary rental. That's going to become a pretty big problem very quickly!

And the areas that need to be fixed are really just variables that have made me lose confidence in their ability to properly do the work. If they say that they specialize in drywall and paint, but "overlooked" large areas of damage and seem to not understand the purpose of primer? Either they really don't know what they're doing, or they're taking shortcuts and hoping that a 66 year old widow won't notice. Either way, that really makes me worry about the structural things they're doing that I can't see.

@bry911, thanks for all of the info and insight!

I'm going to sit her down this evening, let her read this thread, and discuss a plan. My vote is to fire them now, even if we have to pay them in full; that's better than throwing good money after bad, and risking a much larger problem in the long run. Then we can bring in a better contractor to at least do the framing and heavy lifting to get her back in the house before it gets cold.

But it's ultimately her house and her decision, so I'll go along with whatever she wants.

Looking at the scope of work you described, they had to be out of their mind to do all that for 10k, that number doesn't make any sense even in a low-cost region.

Everything I read that you said, it sounds like they pulling materials from another job (maybe they are "clipping" material from another job, who knows) and keeping your job on the back burner and show up when they have free time.

I can't see how you strapped yourself into this low-cost job when you have to remove walls, do electrical to code, install the kitchen and countertops, move n replace all doors, trim the place out, remove popcorn and paint the entire house, install new flooring throughout, clean up, dumster, etc. Or maybe you hired a "fly-by night-contractor" who told you they do all that for 10k and they be done in a few weeks. Sounds like a low-bid to get a foot in the door and get as much money as they can (the sweet-low price that ends up costing double).

@ this point, I think the guy is waiting to get fired because there is no way they can finish this job for that amount.

By the way, are there permits involve and inspections? Which I doubt anyone filed for anything.

@GN Builders L.L.C:

I can't see how you strapped yourself into this low-cost job when you have to remove walls, do electrical to code, install the kitchen and countertops, move n replace all doors, trim the place out, remove popcorn and paint the entire house, install new flooring throughout, clean up, dumster, etc.

That's not entirely accurate. They're not doing any electrical work other than removing and reinstalling outlets for the drywall. No plumbing, either (my girlfriend's sister's husband is a licensed plumber and doing that part). We're also taking care of the debris ourselves, so there's no dumpster or removal on their end.

Otherwise, there's a simple issue that none of us involved really knows how much it's supposed to cost. Somebody says that it's not that bad, they can be done in about a month and do it for $10k... well, in an area where the median income is $24k /year, that feels like he's making bank! LOL

Or maybe you hired a "fly-by night-contractor" who told you they do all that for 10k and they be done in a few weeks. Sounds like a low-bid to get a foot in the door and get as much money as they can (the sweet-low price that ends up costing double).

Yeah, I'd say you pretty much nailed it with that.

By the way, are there permits involve and inspections? Which I doubt anyone filed for anything.

I talked with the county planning department beforehand, and they said that no permits were required as long as there were no new outside structures built, no major electrical or plumbing changes, no changes to load-bearing structures, and it didn't affect septic or well. She has municipal water, so none of that was an issue.

Once her other son-in-law starts with the plumbing, though, he might have to get a permit. I'm staying out of that one, though! :-D

You need a discussion with you, the homeowner and this handyman. Tell him you are unhappy with the quantity and the quality of his work. He might be just as happy to walk away from this mess as you will be to get rid of him.
I have experience in areas with low house prices and low incomes. There always seem to be a few fellows with some basic skills and real "go-getter" attitude. Yes, they take the wife/girlfriend to work, futz around occasionally working on this or that project and a couple hours later, they leave to go get her. These people are supposedly available to work but they haven't held a steady job for so long that they don't have the discipline to work every day, especially a full time schedule. Some peope often work really cheap but can't do self employment. They may not have transportation, tools, and stable living situation and probably have a few more unhealthy habits than just cigarettes. They may have useful skills but take some intense management to keep a project on track. If you are in a position to work alongside them, you might get more done than simply tackling the work DIY.
I suggest give up on redoing anything that isn't actually dangerous and concentrate on getting the floors done and reconnecting the heat. Everything else can be done later when you have time to jump in yourself or finally get to the top of a contractor's project list.
Sorry you got suckered by this fellow and his unrealistic plans.

There always seem to be a few fellows with some basic skills and real "go-getter" attitude. Yes, they take the wife/girlfriend to work, futz around occasionally working on this or that project and a couple hours later, they leave to go get her. These people are supposedly available to work but they haven't held a steady job for so long that they don't have the discipline to work every day, especially a full time schedule. Some peope often work really cheap but can't do self employment. They may not have transportation, tools, and stable living situation and probably have a few more unhealthy habits than just cigarettes. They may have useful skills but take some intense management to keep a project on track.

@Lyndee Lee, I swear you must know the guy I'm dealing with!!! LOL You described him perfectly. As far as I can tell, he WAS working for a licensed contractor, and this is his approach to going it on his own. Whether he was fired by the contractor, though, I don't know.

He does bring his wife every day, too. She says that her contribution is the painting, but since he only started painting last week then I don't know what value she brought for the previous 6 weeks other than companionship. I "suspect", though, that she would get bored of sitting and watching him work all day, which could be why they always left early.

And those "unhealthy habits"? I've noticed that they leave early on Friday (like, come in at 11 and leave by 1), and text every Monday to say they're both sick and can't work. But then on Tuesday they seem just fine. So... yeah, I have my suspicions on that one.

So I completely agree, I think that I'm dealing with a guy that doesn't really know how to be self employed, doesn't know how to manage his own time, and really has no idea how to appropriately price a job. So he's dug a hole that he doesn't know how to get out of.

I suggest give up on redoing anything that isn't actually dangerous and concentrate on getting the floors done and reconnecting the heat.

I literally JUST texted them and said that same thing! To focus on the subfloor throughout the house right now, then insulation and drywall, and we'll go from there... none of this "finish one room at a time" plan that's not working.

I'm self employed, too, and really don't have time to be there all day and micromanage, but that really does seem like the best move. Maybe I can get my girlfriend to do that; her job is online so she could do it while sitting there and watching, and they won't expect her to chip in like they would me.

If he always brings the wife, who drives? In my experience, this sort often doesn't have a license or they only have one vehicle that runs somewhat reliably

To that one, I'm not sure. I know that she was delivering for DoorDash so I know that she can legally drive, but I don't know if he has a license or if they have more than one vehicle.

Several years ago, though, I hired a handyman to do some minor repairs at my house. I was very busy with work at the time, so my girlfriend was the one that texted him to confirm hours, etc.

At one point, his wife called my girlfriend, demanding "who are you?? why are you texting my husband??"

We thought that was hilarious!

He kept on working and finished the job, but his wife came with him and sat in the car the whole time!