On August 1, 2024, I moved my family of five into a house that wasn't finished.
Half the lights worked. The light switches were wired wrong: the living room switch turned on the kitchen lights. The bathroom was plumbed but had no sewer exhaust. The bedroom smelled like sewer gas. The floors were covered in drywall mud.
The contractor who managed it and did the majority of framing had taken my money, weekly, as I needed to keep things moving, until there was no money left and fourteen promised items were still unfinished.
He said it after I'd written the final checks. I had paid everyone in full before the work was done. $2,000 to the plumber. $6,000 to the electrician. $7,000 to the drywaller. $12,000 in final contractor fees.
I wasn't a reckless person.
I wasn't an uninformed one. I had done what felt like the right things. I hired someone my realtor recommended. I paid as work progressed. I held emergency meetings when things stalled. I personally sourced replacement subcontractors when his fell through.
And I still ended up in a house I couldn't finish and couldn't refinance, because the contractors had already been paid in full.
When I went back to my banker and explained that the plumbing and electrical still weren't complete but that the contractors had assured me they'd come back to finish, he stopped me with one question.
Banker: “That last payment, was it 'paid in full'?”
Me: “Yes.”
Banker: “Good luck getting them back out here.”
He wasn't being unkind. He was telling me the truth I had not been equipped to see before I needed to see it. I hadn't lost my leverage at the end. I had given it away, one weekly check at a time, without understanding what I was handing over.
It was then that the absolute reality of the situation hit me.
I got two more loans to finish the property, mostly for materials, as I had to complete it myself (with a lot of help from friends). It almost killed me with the stress, heat, ladder climbing, frustration, and waking up at 3:30 am every morning, panicking about how this was all going to get done by the deadline.
In the middle of this mess, while still working a full-time job, on a coffee break, I got the idea: “Damn. If I wrote down everything that I learned, it would sure be helpful to the next person behind me. And it's not even that complicated.”
So I wrote 16 things that I would do differently. Now, here we are.
I am not a contractor attorney. I am not a licensing expert or a construction consultant. What I am is a homeowner who documented everything that went wrong, researched every better path I could have taken, and built a system out of that, so that the next person standing where I stood has something I didn't.
Clinton Treece
Author, 16 Things I Wish I'd Known BEFORE I Hired A Contractor
