SO CAL PROPERTY MAINTENANCE

**After I posted the review, I received a profanity laden voice mail from Carl. Put this at the top of the bad things listed below.
We hired Carl to help us with some work around our new home.
+ His painting is excellent. He takes a lot of time and care to do the job well and even blend things in with the ceiling (which we didn’t ask for).
+He is a very, very hard worker.
Now for the bad–
–Carl worked on a bathroom remodel for us which included installing a new vanity, painting, and laying new tiles. The job turned out more complicated than anticipated because it involved moving some water pipes. It took Carl much much longer than estimated to complete this portion of job– which I do not blame him for due to the complexity. However, what I do blame him for is carelessness. For example, Carl put adhesive on some pipe adapters (that he had asked me to pick up) only to realize that they were the wrong size. I then had to scrub them for over ½ an hour so they could be returned. Don’t most people test the part first before applying glue? I should also add that the drain pipe under the new vanity has never stopped leaking– Carl tried 2x to fix this before we gave up and began looking for someone else to get it right.
–Although Carl worked very hard, I thought he was oblivious to problems his work was causing. For example, he would park his truck in our driveway when it was clear that there wasn’t enough room (for us or our neighbors) and everyone was being inconvenienced. He was also not careful about tracking paint and dust around our house even after seeing my wife constantly cleaning up. We felt so sorry to our neighbors because Carl would load and unload his truck in our driveway at late hours.
–While re installing our washing machine, Carl didn’t hook things up properly and a bunch of water then flooded our newly installed bamboo floor. Although Carl did his best to use a wetvac and get the water up– the flood caused a few floor boards to warp. Carl offered to replace these but after all that had gone wrong… we honestly didn’t want him to do this.
–Carl borrowed many of my personal tools for work. In the beginning I thought this wasn’t a big deal but became a persistent issue over the course of our job. Some of my own tools then became mixed in with his creating more problems when I needed something. Carl actually used my power drill for other customer’s jobs. He did ask me late at night just as he was about to leave if this was ok… but he had already packed up the charger before asking (i’m guessing he thought I wouldn’t realize).
–While working, Carl asked me if he could store a few things in our garage and on our patio. I didn’t realize that a few things turned into 3 suv loads of wood, a mattress, chairs, and drywall. Originally, Carl and I agreed to a storage charge of $ 100. As our job neared completion, I applied this $ 100 to the money I owed Carl at which time he objected saying that the storage credit would only be for «future» and not current work. Would anyone accept such an arrangement? I certainly wouldn’t. This was a common occurrence I experienced with Carl– we would agree to something like a storage fee and then he would add a condition (like not applying the fee to my current bill) and expect me to go along with it at the last minute. When I made it clear that this arrangement was not acceptable Carl and I agreed his belongings would be moved out on Tuesday ¹¹⁄₁₈. As this date approached I reminded Carl repeatedly by text that his stuff needed to go. Yet– four days after the 18^th a bunch of his things are still at our house. Disposing of construction materials is extremely difficult for homeowners and words can’t express how frustrating and annoying this is.