Newbie here who has really been impressed with the amount of knowledge this site shares. Wondering if I should dump our kitchen/bathroom designer/builder for remodeling our kitchen and bath. We plan on a full gutting, making a kitchen window hugh, opening up part of 1 wall and everything new...floors, appliances, island , cabinets the works in both kitchen and a bath.

Story...contacted a well respected local designer/builder who did a friend's kitchen/bath 10 yrs ago and they HIGHLY recommended him. The guy wins local awards all the time. We started last Sept saying we wanted to start construction at the end of April this year to assure completion prior to fall/winter bad weather. He said no problem. We really picked up the pace...chose granite, cabinets, appliances, making a kitchen window hugh to bring in the outdoors, remove part of a wall etc. Well, we went thru winter then spring. Then he said we would probably be able to start construction in June...still not enough forward movement...got hung up in remeasuring everything again for the cabinets etc. June comes and he says he is ready to put in the cabinet order for pricing and then will have a contract/bid ready for us when we return from a vacation in July, he promises us we are absolutely the next job for his construction crew and will start when we return. We return and no bid. In fact, he never submitted the cabinet order to get a price. Then we find out he has in fact moved his crew to "a new job" after promising we were next and has been working on another design job rather than completing ours!. We try one last time to get it all together to try to start in early Sept but now...he is making up excuses like "we may be having an issue with our supplier for the tiles you wanted" etc and one excuse after another. We have paid for most of the design and have learned a lot of what is out there and this has resulted in us knowing the layout we want for the new kitchen. I just told him as it was now obvious that as we have no bid yet and he has shifted his energy to another job that there is no way to complete the remodel this year as he said it would take 3 months or so and we do not want to go into Thanksgiving and beyond. I just told him to suspend all further design or other work for us. He is saying we can pick it up again this fall and winter and is "promising" again he can start next April. Everyone who has had work completed by this guy/firm ends up loving the quality and final design...but often state it took longer than they expected. I think this guy has ADD(attention deficit disorder) or something. I know he owns the design but I think we can easily guide another firm to what we know we now want re layout etc.

I want to just drop him and move on to another designer/builder in the area who is also supposed to be good and is recommended by other friend's.

I think we have been neglected here several times and no longer trust anything he tells us.

Am I correct to jump ship, dump him and move on?

Thanks in advance to all!