Taking action against a contractor who is taking forever

[Snowbird80]

I signed a contract about five months ago to perform a moderate amount of renovation work to a small cottage I purchased. The contract did not specify an end date. The project should've taken about 8 weeks or so, but as I said, we're now on month five. Everything started off fine, but now it's at the point where I get maybe one day of work a month out of him, and communication is intermittent. Most of the time he doesn't answer or return my calls, texts or emails. I got a hold of him a couple weeks ago and told him the work needed to be done within the next five weeks, and he assured me it would be, but there's been one day of work since then, and that was after a sub bailed on him three times. He's back to not returning calls or keeping me up to date. I would estimate the job is about 85% completed, but some of the work may need to be redone, and the home is currently unlivable. 99% of the estimate has been paid in full. There was some additional work done a few months ago, but he never sent me any receipts for the work. I'm in Rhode Island.

I'm not sure what my next steps should be. I don't have the luxury of just paying someone else to finish the work, but I'm facing homelessness if I allow this to go on.

 

[LdiJ]

I signed a contract about five months ago to perform a moderate amount of renovation work to a small cottage I purchased. The contract did not specify an end date. The project should've taken about 8 weeks or so, but as I said, we're now on month five. Everything started off fine, but now it's at the point where I get maybe one day of work a month out of him, and communication is intermittent. Most of the time he doesn't answer or return my calls, texts or emails. I got a hold of him a couple weeks ago and told him the work needed to be done within the next five weeks, and he assured me it would be, but there's been one day of work since then, and that was after a sub bailed on him three times. He's back to not returning calls or keeping me up to date. I would estimate the job is about 85% completed, but some of the work may need to be redone, and the home is currently unlivable. 99% of the estimate has been paid in full. There was some additional work done a few months ago, but he never sent me any receipts for the work. I'm in Rhode Island.

I'm not sure what my next steps should be. I don't have the luxury of just paying someone else to finish the work, but I'm facing homelessness if I allow this to go on.

Unfortunately if a contractor is robbing peter to pay paul, he has little incentive to give any kind of priority to a job on which he has been fully or almost fully paid. Therefore he tends to give priority to those jobs that are bringing in cash. You should have paid no more than 50-70% of the job prior to it being finished. You very well may need to bring someone else in to finish the job, and then sue the contractor for the extra outlay.