Home Remodeling Horror – 2 sides to this story

One of the underlying ideas behind RenoVine.com is that we all can learn from others’ home renovation experiences and especially their mistakes.

Here are 2 articles by Allan Drury of The Journal News about one such cautionary tale, in all it’s gory and unsettling detail.

“The dispute is a good example of the troubles consumers and contractors can face when a large-scale home renovation project goes wrong.

The consumer ends up with an unfinished house and little recourse despite having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. The contractor can be stuck without an easy way to collect money he feels he is legally owed. If the sides go to court, they can be in for a legal fight that can drag on for months.”

Read In-house dispute costs everyone first and then Both sides looking back. The latter article includes timely tips for both homeowners and builders / general contractors that will help you avoid litigious outcomes like this one.

Two things jumped out at me immediately.  First, how the breakdown of trust and communication between the parties escalated the situation.  How much effort did the contractor put into managing the process and the homeowners’ expectations?

Secondly, how important it is to check references, and from a wide variety of sources. One positive recommendation, even from a “trusted source”, isn’t enough. Stay tuned folks …

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 7:39 pm and is filed under New York, Reno Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.