C T Stavely Construction

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3 weeks ago
Quoted $43,800 for unfinished basement/foundation for 2100 sq ft house. I now have a basement with floor joists and over $85,000 in invoices. The foundation is substantially incomplete, lacking garage floor and patio floors. When i discovered builder went over budget (he did not know) , he said he would review invoices to see what happened. He then blamed 84 Lumber Company for not adding enough to estimate,.
He blamed the excavation crew he used for unlevel excavation and "over dig", which he said required double gravel and concrete. He blamed "soft" ground, which he said required more block for patios. He told me he did not supervise the excavation crew (that he's never worked with) because they said they didn't need him to. All of these reasons were retrospective and never mentioned until I told him he was over budget. He said 84 Lumber quoted most items on high side and the overage on basement would be absorbed by rest of house. In mid December 2017, I asked him to give me a final number on what the house would cost to finish. A month and a half later, he returned with a hand-written list of items which totaled more money to finish the house than he estimated to begin with, despite my having already paid him over $60,000 by that time (which was well over his quote for the basement and foundation).

The original house plans did not include a basement. He said he always used a poured concrete floor and 4' wall height for crawl spaces. I asked how much morr converting the crawl space to a basement would cost since the floor was already going to be concrete. He said it would only add about $10,000 to the cost of the foundation. After he went over budget, I brought this up, but he said "I meant that was just for labor."