On the first item, the subfloors. You can, "fudge" the carpet with a transition in height. Forget the tile continuation without some sort of, 'Rube Goldberg" solution.
It was his job to plan for the unevenness of the floor, if it existed. Or the level transition from old to new. He screwed up, and there's no easy fix he will do.
Things buried within the job are not priced into the job. They are unearthed and the added costs are given to the homeowner.
On #2, was it in the contract? If so, he does it. If not, get an estimate on the job. It would be an added cost. The estimate sounds like it wasn't detailed. A one page contract for a room addition contains more detail then can fit on one page. When you read it, you should have paid closer attention to the details and brought up these missing things before you signed it.
Whether these were, "Sins of omission or sins of commission", on the contractor, is open to speculation.
Ron

Thanks, Ron. The contract itself was short but it included all the detail on the drawings by reference, so the "what was his" is definitely clear and contractual, as it specified how the soffits and gutters would be done ("to match existing gutters, running down at point 13 and 17"). The level of the detail in the prints was solid, and said "by owner" next to everything we're doing (basically all the interior finishing). I would never have signed a contract that said only "GC will build crawlspace, frame, brick and roof."

On the floor, I've got a theory that I need to confirm. I think the joists on the original house may be smaller than those on the addition. We ripped up an upstairs floor to sister the joists before we tiled, and when we brought the new joists in they were slightly higher, so we planed them down before installing them. Thus it's possible that could be the same on the first floor. I'll go down in the crawlspace tonight and measure to see if that's the case. If it is, is the fix something that goes in our bucket to pay for since it wasn't discovered until demo (like finding rot inside a wall), or his, since it's something he should or could have anticipated?

Well, if the contractor had said when he started to install the new joists, "These are bigger than the old ones. We're going to have to plane them down to match the old ones.", he would have had a good argument for insisting you bear that cost. Now the fix is going to be a lot more expensive - and he's the one who should have noticed there was going to be a problem.

Our contractor made a lot of annoying oversights, but none as hard to fix or live with as yours.

If the contract clearly has him doing the boxing and gutter, then politely insist that it be done. You sound handy, and if you want to help smooth things with the floor issue, then offer to do the gutter portion yourself. That's much more a DIY project than the soffit and fascia.

On the floor, it should be on your contractor to come up with a fix. I assume that continuiing the carpet and tile really means that you'll be installing new tile and carpet in both new and old areas (who has that much tile from the original install?). Be open to him installing 3/8 inch plywood on the old section to level them out. Or pouring a self leveling gypsum based floor leveler over everything. You'd have a small height difference to the rest of the house, but not within a room.

Not that I have to remind you, but remember to be nice, neither you or the GC want to be left with an ugly product and neither of you want a fix that costs a lot of money (whether it's his or yours). Work together and throw ideas at each other.

For the first point, it's the homeowner who should be prepared for the cost of change orders for the major unknowns that come up during a renovation. Bids would have to be awfully thickly padded if every contractor had to bear the cost of taking care of all major unknowns. Think of it this way, you would have had to pay for a higher bid had he priced in potential leveling in advance--and I doubt he would have refunded your money if no leveling were needed. For the second point, the contractor should definitely take care of things with no additional charge. Unlike the first point, he presumably priced it into his bid because you clearly specified the task, so you have indeed already paid for it.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if it sounds like he was contracted to build an additon to meet up with the existing house with the intention that he continue the flooring from one to the other in one continious surface.

If this is the case, this isn't an unforseen circumstance, he overlooked this. Assuming the flooring isn't down yet, I would think the "easier" fix is to shim up the existing subfloor the 3/8s with plywood or SLC. I don't see where anyone mentioned a change that would require a change order.

Clarification: Unfortunately we CANNOT shim up/build up/put SLC on the existing subfloor to make it level with the new one. The existing floor is our kitchen, which we remodeled last November. It has new tile, and cabinets sitting atop said tile. We are using the same tile to continue on into the addition (breakfast nook and then sunroom).

My dilemma is knowing whether or not he should have been expected to not only line up the new crawlspace block with the existing crawlspace block (his effort to produce a floor level with the existing one), but also to check the joist size from the existing crawlspace to ensure they were the same as what he was going to use.

yes, he should have made sure the new floor was the same level or even slightly LOWER than the existing. way easier to build up 3/8" than to bring it down the same amount!

reading your other thread you made 2 classic mistakes, 1 you took teh LOWEST bidder, and 2 you used a friend of a friend's recommendation. i am truly sorry this happened to you, but this is why you don't go on a single recommendation and NEVER on price alone.

i bet if his hand is forced he will try to just use a thinner subfloor. do NOT let him do this unless the new subfloor is already multi layer. if he has 2 3/4" layers, maybe one can be reduced to a 1/4" or so and then a thicker layer of thinset make up the difference. but don't let him just rip out the good subfloor and put something that will have sag and bounce to it or you will have cracked tiles in no time.

looking at the pics in the other thread, he(and you) should have seen this back in late July. he was working right next to the studs where they were taking out the window, door and wall, and it should have been noticeable then.

about the only thing is can come up with other than ripping the whole thing down would be to put a transition in. soemthign like a marble strip. i know it is not what you want, but you probably will have to accept it.

If you are basically satisfied with the work that this contractor has done, except the 2 issues you mentioned, I think you should be prepared to compromise. On issue 1, since it is probably not feasible to go back to square one and rebuild the floor in the new room so it is the correct height, I think it should be the contractor's responsibility to put in some kind of transition tile (or other material) at the threshold where the floor height changes. It should be something that YOU feel is in keeping with the quality and standard of the work you are paying for. On issue 2, I would split the cost 50-50.

By the way, I am not a contractor. I am just an average person who understands that life is sometimes full of bad surprises, especially when you build something.

If you go hard-ball with the contractor, you may find yourself in a stand-off with a lot of bad feelings, and then the chances of a reasonable resolution of your issues will be greatly reduced. Of course, you could to go court, but then everybody loses except the lawyers.

If you're a contractor and you do additions and you can't plan it so the two floors match up, he shouldn't be in the business. The difference in floor joist size is irrelevant. You open the side of the house to expose the subfloor height at three places along the floor. Then you plan the addition from the subfloor height down to the footing. Not from the bottom up, and get it close.
The reason it was not done correctly is that the contractor is incompetant.
There is no fix for the tile at this point. The subfloor is glued and screwed to the joists and the walls are put on top of the subfloor. What you need is a solution that won't make the transion look half assed, or be a tripping hazard. The tile would require a transitional saddle from old to new, set at a height where it matches the tile in the addition. How it is planned will depend on the thickness of the tile to be installed. The row of tiles in the kitchen that borders the addition might need to be removed so the saddle could sit lower, but that would depend on site conditions.
The suggestions above are from people who should not post answers, only questions.
Ron (Remodeling Contractor)

Agree the contractor need to take the hit for this. Be professional and business like and keep referring to the contract. The floor leveling is his job.

Another issue about the tile floor is whether this contractor built the floor joist system so it supports a tile installation. Just because it's a floor, doesn't mean it will be adequate for tile.
What are the joist sizes and what distance do they span? The minimum thickness for a wood subfloor is about 1 1/4" for tile, though you can get away with less using the Schulter products.
But if there's too much bounce in the floor due to understructuring, the tile grout will pop and then the tiles will crack.
Ron

OK, sounds like this guy should have either done a little more up-front work setting the floor height or, at a minimum, realized when he had goofed and fixed it before he framed the rest of the house. His dime to fix.

In defense of the GC (or perhaps us for choosing him :-)), he is a respected builder in our area, whose whole family is in the biz in some way or another. Two different people in the industry recommended him. He does generally do new construction, so probably the worst one could say about him is that he apparently didn't consider the floor tie-in issue carefully enough when he was building. He found a few other things along the way, like an error the draftsman made in a window size that would have interfered with a roof pitch, and adjustments the brick masons would need to make because of a slight height difference in adjoining windows, and fixed/accommodated them without a hitch.

He was the lowest bidder, but his price wasn't lowball by any means (we do have lower costs here in the midwest than some of you), and it was still about 10% over where we were targetting, based on other research/estimates we had done in our prep work.

So I shall talk to him about options for fixing the floor height and firmly but politely insist that it's his responsibility. The height difference is imperative in the kitchen/breakfast nook transition, less so where the family room and sunroom connect (different flooring; I'm fine with a transition of some kind), so I won't be buildzilla about it and insist he fix something that isn't critical to our final use.

Ron: the floor was designed with sufficient support for tile. The joists are 2x10s at 16" OC, and the max span is 10 feet, so our deflection is L/805, even if we plane the joists down to 9". We're using porcelain, not natural stone, so we're fine there.

Thanks again to all for your help, and I'll let you know how things turn out.

Well, the GC called me last night and asked if he could come pick up his last check. I told him we still had a few issues, he asked what they were, I gave him the bullet points, and he said he'd come by tonight.

Today he sent over someone to check out the soffit and gutter work, and when the GC stopped by, our conversation about those being specified in the plans was professional and fairly short. He said he hadn't included it in his bid, we said "that's why we put it in the plans in such detail" and said we didn't feel it was our responsibility if he overlooked it. He seemed resigned to it. Though all of our copies of the prints have gone the way of all the earth, so I called our architect to get a couple new copies just so he can be assured that's what he signed up for.

On to the floor: There are 3 different connection points along the 35-foot length of the addition to the house: a 13-foot opening into the kitchen, and 2 sets of french doors about 8 feet apart. The openings at the french doors are the 2 exposed ones that are 3/8" off. The long opening to the kitchen is boarded up. He took us around to where we could see the kitchen connection, and it's actually pretty close to dead-on (a little sanding to smooth out the sharp edges will take care of it). That's the critical portion that needs to have continuous tile.

He said basically that the original house is 3/8" out of level from one end to the other, and they built the addition to be perfectly level, assuming we didn't want the addition to be similarly out of level. In retrospect, if he had brought this up when he discovered the issue, that's probably what we would have decided to do, among the options (I did say "I wish you had consulted us at the time"). He said "most floor guys are used to dealing with situations like this", so I think he just didn't think to bring it up to us with suggestions about how to work with it. He advised us to use SLC to bring the existing floor (it's the FR) up to the level of the addition, and thus be more level than it currently is. We are replacing the carpet with hardwood, so that's doable (whereas the kitchen isn't).

So I'm feeling better about the whole situation. I'm glad we've got a better option than tearing out the subfloor.

We had a few other minor issues: caulking around the windows, vapor barrier in the crawl space, and basic clean-up. He wrote down all of them and said he'd take care of them next week.

I had my kitchen remodeled and I am not happy how there's a large gap on both sides of the stove and countertops. When I brought this to the GC's attention, he basically said that there wasn't anything he could do. Almost like this is an everyday occurence. The cabinet guy said that the granite people made this mistake and should have brought the edge closer to the stove. Well, after looking at it for a month, I'm still not happy with it so I called the granite people and somebody is coming out today to look at it. I even ordered those t-strips [haven't gotten them yet] but I just feel that the opening for my stove was cut too big. I know the standard size is 30" and it measures 30.5". Most stoves are not exactly 30" anyway so that makes for even more of a gap that is very noticeable. Not too sure who is at fault here but why should I accept this if I'm not happy? Does this happen a lot to consumers who have remodeling done? I know I'm picky but I don't think I'm being too picky about this. Stuff can fall in between the gaps on both sides, plus, it doesn't look as nice with the gaps. I'm thinking that a professional should have known better.

Well, the granite people were here to look at the gap at the stove and countertop and his explanation was.."they install the granite flush with the cabinet so therefore, he was saying that the contractor that installed the cabinets made the cutout too large and the granite templater just followed the dimension of the cabinets. So, who is responsible for this? Am I supposed to just accept this?? I'm really upset with my contractor anyway because his men did not hook my dishwasher up correctly and I had to pay an appliance company to do it. I intend to get reimbursed by my contractor for that mistake. I don't know why the cutout was made to 30.5" instead of 30" but I can tell you, my contractor never mentioned this to me. In fact, he never mentioned any problems to me. I had to find them and tell him about them. Needless to say, I'm very upset with this contractor and will never refer him to anybody.

I always love the advice given by amateurs and the judgements made by homeowners here ALWAYS blaming the contractor. If they know this much about construction why didn't they do their projects themselves?

As for the gutter issue....shame on you for screwing him out of the cost of that part of your project. When he came in that low during the bidding process you had to have known that everything wasn't included in his bid and it was the responsibility of you and your architect to confirm that everything was included. He sounds like an honest guy and should have refused to pay for your gutters out of his pocket.

I want to respond to bellamay's comment. I'm not saying that the contractor is WRONG all of the time but I feel this way...just like a dentist, you can't really see everything that they do to your mouth so you have to take their word that they did everything 'RIGHT'. Well, I doubt that there are many contractors out there that will fess up to making mistakes! How many dentists have you heard of saying..."oops, I made a mistake". No...they either try to fix it and go on their way or try to hide that fact that they messed up and blame it on something else!

We [homeowners] are really at their mercy especially if you are female. My contractor didn't own up to anything he or his men did. I had to go through it all and point things out that shouldn't have been done in the first place. He didn't offer anything information about something being wrong or damaged. I guess he was hoping that I wouldn't see it. I don't know but I feel that contractors should definitely be very opened to the homeowner and what could be expected, etc. Mine wasn't at all. No communication there.

Bellamay:
Wow, I hope I didn't come across as blaming the contractor for everything. The reason we hired him (we're DIY-ing everything else in our remodel) is because this addition was beyond our knowledge/skill level. And the reason for my post was to calibrate on what was reasonable in this case. To this day, I am happy with the quality of the work he did, and with how he delivered on the schedule promised. He could have communicated better on the floor levelness issue, but we've recommended him to others and I'd use the guy again.

I disagree that we should have known something was missing from his bid. It didn't seem unusually low; in fact, based on 2 estimates we had received a year earlier, we were expecting to come in around $35K for the shell, this guy bid $42K, and we did some of the demo to take it down to $40K. We live in the midwest, so don't have crazy-high prices like the coasts (thankfully!). It was lower than a couple other year-old estimates, and lower than the other formal bid we got about a month earlier, but it was by no means suspiciously low. The way we ensured that it covered everything was by referencing the very detailed drawings in our contract.

im not happy the contract did not clean after him self my new sink i has a film in the bottom the tile is not even in some places ITS BEN 3DAYS 18- 19 HOURS IM PAYE HIM 25HOUR