Business ProfileforJake the Man

have only left one poor review in my life but I feel that I have to tell a bit of my story with working with “Jake the Man” since it cost me $14,000 and majority of that was labor. It all started when my master bathroom flooded which damaged of course my bathroom, part of my bedroom which had new carpets and my laundry room which was on the other side of the wall. I hired him to replaced flooring with Lifeproof Vinyl throughout the house, replace baseboards throughout the house, fix drywall damage and install a new vanity and mirror in my bathroom. He offered to paint my bathroom since it would of course be empty while he was installing the tile floor. To make things simple for the readers, I will explain the issues with the job in list format. Some of the info provided is by observations and some of it is also provided by another contractor that I had come in to review the work (unfortunately, he cannot get me on the books to help until the end of the year). 1. The bathroom tile was installed completely unevenly, he eventually decided to try and fix some of it but said that the tile was defective (it came on a mesh base and was fairly high end tile. It remains wavy to this day with pieces sticking out and so i have had to cover it all with carpet. He also left several pieces of tile simply not in place so when I put the register cover back on, you can see the missing tile. I don’t know how I am going to fix this, He did not evenly spread out the grout or clean it and so I have to clean and re-grout the entire thing. There is also no sealing or calking up against the bathtub which means that there has likely been water gathering under the tile this whole time. 2. The light and vanity are completely not in line and he hadn’t even placed sheetrock anchors into the mirror so it was hanging off of the wall. The light is not level, so I am going to have to take that down and somehow fix it. 3. The plumbing was not completed underneath the vanity. It is not sealed and the PVC pipe is simple just hanging out there. He said that there was no way to move the vanity to make it in line with the mirror but the contractor who came said that he could easily have just moved it in a different direction to make it fit. 4. The bathroom which he offered to paint a light green color. He painted the ceiling green. There are splotches and drip lines all over from the paint. He did not tape or paint up to the bathtub so there are many spots where the old paint is simply VERY visable. He declined to paint the window sill and when asked, he said, “I had a paint brush in my hand and there were cobwebs so I couldn’t just paint it. Of course there were cobwebs, our bathroom had been out of commission for months. 5. The base boards in th bathroom especially but throughout the entire house are so damaged. It looks like they took a nail gun and hit them so hard that filling them with putty and sanding them down is going to be night mare. The baseboards do not touch the floor in many spots as well. 6. He decided to calk the baseboards to the wall and the calk goes so high that I now have to buy paint in every color of the house to cut into the base boards after we fix them because it looks like someone just slopped a paintbrush and in some areas, there are literally inches of calk coming up over the dry wall. 7. When removing the baseboards, he did not score them. The original base boards were maybe an inch or two in width and the new ones are about 4 or so. so it should have been easy to remove them without pulling up drywall. There is drywall pulled up throughout the house which I now have to repair. 8. He actually somehow caused damage to at least two corners of my house and so now I have to re-sheetrock those. 9. I did not see a level during the entire weeklong project of this job and so everything that was done was done with eye estimates. 10. Professionalism: Jake showed up around 10am each day and left around 2 or 3. He had a different guy on the job almost every day which would have been fine except after watching someone install the pergo for half a day, I came back to see that he was teaching the guy how to do it. There were spaces in the pergo so large that you could fit a quarter. While he fixed some of these, there are still corners sticking up which means that my “lifeproof” vinyl is not lifeproof should there be a spill. You can actually catch your foot on some of the raised corners. 11. His dog left droppings ALL over my yard and one day he spent the entire day looking for his dog who was terrorizing my neighbors chickens. 12. He simply OPTED OUT of placing pergo in my hot water heater closet as discussed. 13. My bathtub and kitchen sink were both filled with material and grout which I have still not been able to get out. There was a 1/4” of dust at least throughout my entire house with tools left all over that my 2yr old was finding randomly and walking around with. He did not move any furniture back into place and it took me about 6 hours to clean so that we could sleep in the house that night. 14. There is far more damage done to the house than work done correctly. All of the messes from the sheetrock or other supplies were in piles all over my house and yard which I had to clean up. 15. I cam home one day to find mens underwear hanging from my apple tree in my backyard. He said that he spilled something and that was all he had to clean it up. I would think a professional carpenter/handy man would have shop rags or something. 16. He had no concern for these issues and only asked that we leave him a check on the fridge as he was more worried about moving onto the next job than doing mine right. 17. I eventually just asked him to leave as I had discovered that he did not have the talent or sense of obligation to fix what he had done. 18. BTW I came home one day to grab stuff for DEVO and found he and one of his buddies wreaking of marijuana which lying on the ground trying to figure out how to install the tile. There were also cigarettes butts all outside of my side door and my house smelled like cigarettes fro weeks. 19. SO, now, I have to fix tile (which requires ordering another box and probably hiring someone to do it), repaint my bathroom, try to salvage the baseboards, finish lying the flooring, buy paint for every single room to cover the inch or so of calk that was smeared onto the paint, figure out how to fix/salvage the baseboards (which he painted with ceiling paint), re-paint my bathroom, replace my kitchen sink, re-grout my bathroom and seal in the edges, re-level the baseboards where they are at least a 1/3rd of an inch off the ground, put in the transition strips which he did not do because I just couldn’t have him come back, remount my bathroom mirror and light and then fix the holes that were incorrectly drilled for installation, figure out how to do plumbing so that I can actually seal my bathroom plumbing (which to remind you is what caused this issue in the first place), And all this for over 14 THOUSAND DOLLARS which he happily collected. I will say that he took 10% off for work not finished but to me that is wholly not acceptable because I still paid for all of this work that I have to re-do or hire someone to do. Like I said, I don’t like to leave negative reviews and it is beyond me how he was able to collect that amount of money but I felt as if I had no choice. My father who is a master carpenter recommended that I take him to small claims court but I don’t think I have the time or money for that. I still may consider it but I did email him fairly recently, giving him an oppertunity to make it right to which he did not reply. I think I will look and see how long I have to file a claim in court because as I move through this mess and try to fix it and have to hire another contractor to fix things; it is just super hard to stomach spending this money that we did not have to just throw around for this result. Like I said, My father is a master carpenter and I NEVER expected that quality of work but I certainly did not expect the unprofessionalism and total disaster that I was left with. I hope this is helpful to anyone reading. Perhaps there are things that he is capable of doing but I would think twice before hiring him, and the fact that he was the only one that I could get to come and do the work in a timely manner should have been a warning sign. Lesson learned. Also, I did not draw up a contract which was a huge mistake on my part. this was my first time hiring someone to improve/fix my home and it was very exciting for us. If you do decide to hire this man, please consider writing up a contract so that you have something to fall back on should your experience go so terribly wrong. I think I would still have a case in court. Anyway, best of luck in your search for home improvements, It can be exciting and scary and you might want to hire someone right away and get it done but take your time so that you do not end up like me.