My first question is, “Does IL license contractors like CA does and are they aggressive in dealing with the bad ones?”.
I have moved to a very corrupt, very small town in southern IL. People from out of state are buying houses here and it is a nightmare for them. The woman who bought the house next to me paid a local guy $ 10,000 up front to do a small roof 4 months ago and it is maybe 20% complete.
This ? is for another woman who bought a 1910 house and hired a local siding and windows contractor to do an addition. This poor woman is single with an adopted “special needs” daughter. She is not going to survive this mess.
The contractor worked on the addition for months and did not build it according to plans. Wrong french door, crooked windows, outside stairs (not on plans) to basement that will allow water to enter the basement, no door on that, floor joists for first floor do not span the width (although that size is available) of the yet to be “finished basement” so there is a header where there wasn’t supposed to be one (and those 2x12s are spliced together, too) and one of the posts holding up that header looks like a 4 x 4 that slants, the sewer pipe slants toward the house and not toward the outside wall and drain and is hung down in the room instead of up in the space between the floor joists, water in the basement and I didn’t see a sump pump or any provisions for keeping the room dry. He told her the city building inspector didn’t have jurisdiction over his plumbing, the state did.
In addition to that she has paid local handymen up front (to get their cars fixed so they could work) and they didn’t work. Then a worker for the city and his unemployed brother (whose father is a convicted felon who sits on the city council for the last 20+ years) came to pick up the dumpster. They told her it was too heavy and the brother who didn’t work for the city told he needed a check for $ 350 for the city to unload the dumpster. I am telling you this so you can see she cannot find a local contractor to criticize the other contractor’s work, probably not within 3 counties.
My suggestion was to go to the state, but someone told her the contractor would not be licensed with the state.
Any thoughts? Thanks. BTW, I know little about construction as you can tell and my husband is out of town. He would probably see a lot more and understand what should have been done. Like, I would have expected some kind of drain around the outside. I don’t recall as they were building it that they put any black stuff on the outside of the concrete to keep water out.
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briefly, in any state, when a person, licensed or not, takes money to do work and then fails to perform, they have done theft by fraud and can be jailed by the sheriff if there is clear evidence.
second brief, HOs who pay that much up front time after time are fools.
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Piffin, I knew you were out there somewhere! Thanks.
I agree. This woman reminds you of the tall brother's mother-in-law on the show Raymond. So, she is just getting taken advantage of horribly from the local computer repair store to the street people.
I don't know how to help her other than have my husband go in and redo it. But, shouldn't they have waterproofed the outside of the basement walls and then put the dirt back or something. I just see this as being very expensive to do right. And, yes, she paid them in full.
I was hoping she could go to the state.