Accrete Construction Group

I have been reading this board for a few years and have found it useful. Because of this, I feel compelled to share a negative experience on a house renovation project. Despite being warned about the pitfalls of construction in NY and doing extensive research, including on this board, I ended up getting myself into exactly the sort of situation I was hoping to avoid, hence this post, about Accrete... [more]

I have been reading this board for a few years and have found it useful. Because of this, I feel compelled to share a negative experience on a house renovation project. Despite being warned about the pitfalls of construction in NY and doing extensive research, including on this board, I ended up getting myself into exactly the sort of situation I was hoping to avoid, hence this post, about Accrete Construction Group, a licensed general contractor in NYC. I am hoping to avoid someone else going through a similar ordeal by posting about this company here. Despite being paid more than $100000 to do renovation work on a 2-family house in Brooklyn, NY, Accrete Construction Group performed work of very poor quality and did not complete the job. They were also about a year past the contract deadline for completion when I finally gave them a stop order. At that point, they pretended that the work was nearly finished while the apartment was likely months away from being habitable. Here are some specifics: - Among other things, Accrete Construction installed sheetrock in a bathroom without installing the water supply lines. The bathroom was presented as "nearly finished". In truth, whether by neglect or by malice, it was nowhere near functional, and, obviously, the walls should not have been built without any water supply lines present.  - In some rooms built by Accrete Construction, the metal studs used were not attached to anything, resulting in walls with little structural integrity. Some walls were flimsy and could be moved by hand. - Accrete Construction built walls within rooms with no regard for the dimensions specified in the plans in the bid set, thereby rendering the rooms unusable. For example, the long wall in the kitchen went from 120 inches (as specified in the bid set) to 112 inches, making it impossible to build the kitchen as per the bid set.  - In a bathroom, because Accrete Construction built a wall on top of the old wall, the toilet hole was only 12 inches away from the side wall (instead of 16 inches), basically making it impossible to use. - It is clear that the workers employed were not qualified, were negligent and were unsupervised. Incredibly, upon opening up the walls, we found rests of food and a water bottle in new walls built by Accrete Construction. - The metal post put in by a subcontractor of Accrete Construction was not straight. - The vent for the dryer was held together by duct tape and was full of holes. - Metal studs installed by Accrete Construction were already rusted at the bottom in the basement. - The drain pipe for the toilet in a bathroom newly renovated by Accrete Construction, was completely disintegrated and should have been changed. As is, the toilet would have leaked right away. - Walls and ceilings were generally built in a wildly uneven manner. Almost nothing they built was straight. Both floors Accrete Construction put in were improperly installed and were not level. Accrete Construction also did not provide - or pay for - materials that were explicitly listed in the contract documents and that they were responsible to pay for: A/C condenser units, wood flooring, expensive sliding door hardware, mechanical fire rated door, frameless glass shower door, kitchen and bathroom countertops, Benjamin Moore paint etc. By my count, these material add up to more than $23000. Accrete Construction repeatedly did not respect the specifications of the contract: they did not pay attention to drawings, blueprints and generally built things in a haphazard way. They were also a nightmare to deal with: routinely late, bad with returning phone calls and emails. When confronted about issues by the architect and myself, the President of the company and his managers systematically got defensive. They made excuses for everything, blamed the architect and would not accept responsibility for anything.  To be sure, I was not knowledgeable about construction when I started this process and there are many things I would do differently now. This was my first house renovation. I definitely should not have paid this company as much as I did given the low quality of the work and the many delays. Despite doing research and trying to get things right, I was naive and I was misled. I will let everyone here draw their own conclusions but I have started a claim with the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs. [less]