Red Flags When Choosing an Architect/Contractor

It took us a long time before we finally chose an architect for our home project. We learned a lot in the past few years since we had a lot of stuff fixed in our current home. Here's a list of red flags from our experience:

1. The over eager supplier who blinds you with drawings and lay-outs.

2. The one who promises the moon, but under delivers. 

3. The one who cannot stick to the costings and you end up paying 2x more than the proposed cost. 

4. The one who ghosts you when you discover errors with their work. 

5. The one who cannot produce a proper contract.

6. The one who uses substandard materials that puts your family in peril.

7. The one you have to report to the city building official for not doing things right. 

8. The one who does not provide the right materials for their workers to do their job properly.

9. The one who says they'll set a meeting and then you bump into them in the mall during the supposed meeting date and time.

10. The one who doesn't have reliable contacts. 

These are just a few of what we've experienced the past few years. I probably have more bad experiences at the back of my mind. Next week, I'll write about how we chose our architect. 

#BeKind #StaySafe

Why It's Very Hard to Trust Contractors

We've been working on lowering the temperature in our home and making sure we don't get my water dripping indoors. To lower the temp we had vents and whirlwinds installed. It helped a bit, but a curtain of heat would always greet me whenever I stepped out of the bedroom.

We asked advise from several architects and their solution was always quite obtrusive. Eventually, we decided to try a non-obtrsuive solution by a roofing company. 

When they inspected our roof they reported to us that the flashing that was supposed to be installed by a company we previously worked with was only held by wood and a tile. The area was also missing a roof panel.

They had also removed the downspout in the area which caused the front of our roof to be damaged. We did notice that the corner of our front roof would drip a lot. We didn't know that the previous company removed a key downspout that's supposed to distribute rainwater so it doesn't overload parts of the roof.

We had the roof fixed back in late 2022. It snowballed to having other things fixed. We were reassured that the area was fixed and we won't experience any dripping anymore. And that's what we thought.

We immediately reached out to the architect that did the renovations. We sent him the video and all he said was, "Oh, it must have been overlooked". He offered to have it fixed, but his timeline did not work for us since we were having our roof fixed. We told him he could just reimburse us the amount we were going to pay. It was actually the same amount for the work they did not do. 

Roof has been fixed, but the architect has just totally ignored us. Ugh! I'm seriously thinking whether I should write the association he is part of... I'm seriously scared they mucked up other things they fixed.

BTW, the repair of the roof was needed because the original builder of the house did not install flashing and that caused the waterfall in our kitchen and a whole lot of other things were missing in the roof. Good luck to whoever purchases the house beside us. The builder dropped us like a hot potato when all the issues came out.

#BeKind #StaySafe