CDL Construction

INCONSISTENT: One moment dazzling work, the next an expensive (deliberate?) mistake. «I can fix that,» but at his hourly rate. His ongoing mistakes and damage create incessant work, run up the tab, and will lead you to despair of ever completing the work.
SLOPPY: Carlos is of the view that it is better to make a mess than mask/​whatever, about which we’ve had several lively discussions. But for him, it is an ingrained instinct, incompatible with us – and most people, we think. In this argument remember that Carlos charges by the hour, so he might be biased. So we get blue paint oversprayed on pristine white painted cabinets and/​or porous Jerusalem stone. «I can fix that,» but it takes 3−5X the time to clean up these messes that it would have to just do it right to begin with. Texture spayed (again) with no masking which gets everywhere: windows, doors, toilets, trim, everything. «I can clean that,» but it never gets done. Work piles on top of work, and stress goes through the roof. Ultimately, the texture gets painted over, taking outrageous effort to strip, sand, repaint! Or someone else tries to scrape off the texture splatters on the big picture windows (after 3 weeks) and causes $ 10K of damage; which really happened.
MAKE WORK: Crazy good in one moment, horrible in the next. One item over-​square in perfection, such that it made the rest of the cabinet look «out» (it was, so the whole thing had to be redone.) The next item off square by 15 degrees; what was he thinking while doing THAT? First trim piece perfect, next ones so badly installed you feel embarrassed to have to point it out. You feel saturated in stress with all this MAKE WORK. «I can fix that.» But it will cost a fortune to fix once done wrong, and would only have taken only 5 – 10 seconds to line up right or do correctly to start with. Just when you are about to scream he’ll do another good job, and he is a very nice and friendly guy… so the cycle of abuse continues.
RESULTS: About 2 months doing «fix» make work, about $ 15K wasted in time and materials, and one of the worst contractor experiences of our lives. Carlos was paid in full, but now he won’t return calls about where he put things, etc., even after multiple friendly requests. His spotty brilliance is the lure, but in the long run he substantially ruined our house. We figure it will cost us another $ 20K to fix his dodgy work.
IF YOU MUST: Carlos’ best work was on the smaller stuff, where high skill or creatively is needed… and will hold his attention span. His quality drifts wildly on the bigger jobs. In all cases he needs supervision, or else you’ll find even the small work will turn into an «annuity» for him.