A Sept. 2 Real Estate article about contractors attributed a survey solely to Opinion Research Corp. That group conducted the survey, but it did so on behalf of Kimberly-Clark Professional.
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But just weeks into the spring 2005 job, things started going south. Crews installed carpet before the walls were painted. Nichols found strange pipes sticking out of the walls. The contractor installed brass door hinges instead of the satin nickel she had requested.
Then about two months into the job, a painter showed up early one Saturday morning threatening to put a lien on the house. The main contractor had not paid him, he said.
Crews didn't show up for weeks at a time, so Nichols started compiling a lengthy "punch list" of items that needed to be fixed before the end of the job. She called repeatedly, often begging her contractor to correct problems.
The contractor saw this as nitpicking. He stopped taking her calls, with the basement still in disarray. Nichols said her friend, the contractor's wife, was just as evasive. The two haven't talked since last fall.
"Never deal with friends," said Nichols, who gets "a knot in my stomach" any time she goes into the basement. "He took that friendship trust thing and turned it around."
The ceiling fan was never installed, tile around the basement sink is still missing, there's no shower bar and, despite repeated requests for a correction, the shower head for her 6-foot-3 husband, Jason, is about a foot too low.
A Two-Way Street
Although many contractor disputes have landed in court, frustrations often boil over into the online realm through blogs and neighborhood e-mail lists. Established Web sites such as that of Washington Consumers' Checkbook give homeowners a chance to vent about contractors.
Posts range from compliments to frustrated screeds. One homeowner wrote: "Their motto seems to be, 'The customer is always wrong and we can do whatever we like, whenever we like and however we want regardless.' "
Common complaints usually involve unresolved details at the end of the project and jobs taking longer than expected.
The Washington area Better Business Bureau gets more inquiries about the home remodeling industry than any other. The industry gets the third most complaints, coming in behind cellphone companies and computer and Internet repair.
Homeowners' top gripes are work not starting on time, price increases after work has been started and contractors who don't clean up their messes, according to a survey conducted earlier this year by Opinion Research Corp.
But for every horror story of a rogue repairman bilking a customer, contractors have an equal number of war stories about former clients.
