December 2021 I hired District Stairs to renovate my townhouse. In the contract Marlon gave me a quote for $158,652.20. He asked for 50% as first payment. I gave him $79,326.00. He proceeded to do the demolition. A week after he sent an Electrican and a framer. Marlon called me and said pot lights and framing of the closet are not included. He asked for another $5,640 framing of the closets and pot lights. Which I paid because I needed the work to get done. After I paid no one showed up on the site. I called and he said they will come when they want to. I allowed another two weeks to go by and nothing was getting done. I asked him to give me back my money so I can hire someone else to do the work. He said hes not paying me back. I called him several times and he does not answer my calls. District Stairs is not to be trusted.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $186,262.00
- Company Response
Mr. Newton Spencer… This is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. It is you who terminated the contract because of a pending payment of $47000 which you couldn't afford to make or didn't intend to make. In fact, the contract was terminated by you about one year ago, and days before that second payment was due. And, indeed, prior to terminating the contract and causing a breach, you had been in breach several times. Most notably by refusing to pay for extra work, running electrical wires without the approval of the electrical contractor and misrepresenting the fact to the Electrical Safety Authority (ESA), trying to poach District Stairs’ trades and pay them under the table to do extras, and the list goes on.
To be clear:
· Extensive demolition work was completed throughout your house including the basement. This involved removal of bricks from fireplace, removal of flooring including tiles, removal of walls, gutting of washrooms, kitchen and general gutting of the property.
· The main floor was opened up by removal of load bearing walls, reachoring them structurally, and re-routing Hvac, electrical and plumbing therein.
· Extensive framing alterations were done including widening and heightening doorways, (not in contract) building a second laundry room, closets etc.
· Plumbing roughing work was completed throughout for three (3) bathrooms and kitchen.
· Detailed electrical roughing was finished throughout the house, for which a permit was obtained. And the ESA had already passed the work. This included extra requests outside of the contractual arrangement including 30 amp wires for oven, pendant lights over island, wiring for wine fridge, and close to 90 potlights, multiple additional outlets and switches, etc
· Several tons of debris were removed from the premises and disposed of by the truckloads
· Tiles were purchased and tiling was scheduled to be started. And the tiling contractor had already been on site doing preparations for tiling.
Again, on numerous occasions you requested additional work to be done which was outside the scope of the project and the statement of work which District Stairs quoted.
These included insisting that the kitchen be extended from 18 ft to 25ft and that the island be increased from 8ft to 13 ft; that heated floors be installed in the bathrooms, powder room and foyer; widening and heightening of doorways; a linear drain system installed in the master bathroom; lighting over the island and a curbless shower.All major upgrades which not only cost more but also threw our production schedule off and for which you refused to pay or couldn’t afford to pay for.
You knew based on our contract any additional work had to be pre approved and paid for in advance. Yet you attempted to circumvent this by trying to get District Stairs’ crews to do on the side for you, or arbitrarily deciding to pay what you “thought the job was worth” despite what the trades were actually charging for the extra work… leaving District Stairs to cover the shortfall.
From day one, you made requests for which it was apparent you were unable to afford or unwilling to pay for.
It is unfortunate that you misrepresented the facts and are trying to paint a picture which is far from correct.
District Stairs has successfully completed hundreds of projects over the years and continues to add to our immense list of very satisfied customers.
We pride ourselves on being fair and honest and at the core of our existence is ensuring that our customers are satisfied with our work, our prices and our service. We worked hard to build ourselves into a business of integrity. But, we do have a business to run and being in business cost money. The least we expect is that customers be reasonable and pay for extra work which they request. District Stairs has never ever increased any quotation given to hundreds of customers over the years. We stick to our quotes. Customers only pay extra if they request extra. However, quite often, we do do additional work at no cost for some of our customers because we believe that we should give more than we receive. Similarly, we were to install solid oak threads on your staircases instead of the vinyl caps which you had said you could only afford. We had also upgraded you to engineered flooring instead of the vinyl which you said you could only have afforded.But, to this day, Mr Newton Spencer, It’s still inconceivable that you actually wanted an island increased from 8 feet to 13 feet, almost double the size, and a kitchen increased from 18 feet to 25 feet, heated floors,and a range of other improvements which actually cost thousands of dollars, for free.
You terminated the contract and therefore are in breach, Mr Newton Spencer. You owe District Stairs. We didn’t walk away from the project. Work was being carried out at the time of termination.