You need to look over the contract and documentation.

Most places as long as the other side is not announcing they intent not to perform according to contract they are not in breach, however you may be.

Oct - April not extremely bad. Collect documentation, emails, voice calls, check with the contract. You may be responsible for a lot of money should you decide to proceed using this avenue. Litigation's are stressful and waste of money. Even when you have evidence despicable judge might decided not to cite any of your evidence at all. Negotiate, settle, work on common goal.

I've learned my lesson on liars and cheats at Liberty Mutual handling my tornado claim who did not fix my roof as promised, concealed that it was leaking, refused to remediate immediately, delayed adjusting for months, wrote estimate for penneys on the dollar, argued that including moisture and mold would total the house - so they did not, demanded contractor to explain the loss and declared that they "reached an agreement" with him for everything (that did not included all large items and contractor stated and continued to state the house is a total loss), lied about furnace, hired biased engineer who declared everything pre-existent prior to even entering the house and something that would require laws of physics ceased to exist in our attic. The Adjuster first concealed "engineering" report but then immediately executed appraisal with this report. As an "independent" appraiser liberty retained the owner of claims adjusting service habitually used by liberty who conceal his employment. - The Court cited - NOTHING.

Oh wow I can imagine how stressful this must be. We are 10 weeks behind on ours as well.

I think litigation should be a last resort. You haven't really said how you have tried to get your home back on track.

First, as Brian S says, review your contract. What does it say regarding time to completion?

Our builder did not want to give any bad news. So he avoided addressing the issues. I had to help him along. He had given us a schedule as soon as the excavation had been completed but it had never been revised. I asked for some time to review the schedule with him.

I told him according to the schedule I thought we were significantly behind. Did he agree?

I said it appeared that we were at least a month behind if not more. Did he agree with that?

I asked him to redo the schedule so we would know exactly how much we were behind. He did that and it came out 10 weeks from the original completion date.

I explained the urgency of keeping us informed, as we were about to close on the sale of our current home, and would need to live in a hotel with pets etc.

I explained to him exactly how much each weeks delay was costing me. I did not say I was going to bill him, or sue him, or anything like that. Just that every week I had storage, insurance, hotel, meals, etc.

Now I call him each week (we are building remotely) and I review the schedule with him. Like today I said "according to the schedule we start painting the interior on Wednesday. Are we still on track?

"Actually they are starting on Thursday..."

"OK so will they work to make up that time then?"

Etc.

It seems to be going well, the last three weeks we have made some decent progress with stuff.

Best of luck to you. I hope you don't have to fire him.

I find it strange that Houzz allows companies to offer services to members who post questions here. Does Houzz recommend them or is it more like Craigslist? You might want to look at their advice in light of their interests.

It can be very difficult to find a contractor willing to take responsibility for another contractor's work. It involves new agreements with subs, insurance providers, etc and possibly past due material bills and liens. It is usually much cheaper to keep the poor performing contractor if the work is acceptable. This is the power the old contractor has over the situation. Don't try to do this yourself; find someone who can act as a mediator before terminating the contract. Everyone will lose something when that happens.

I have seen a properly licensed sub contractor take over a job as the general contractor with fewer problems than when a new general contractor had been hired. Mediation is the best form of dispute resolution and might even be required in the construction contract. Read the contract carefully several times before taking any action.

Good luck.

I was active on the Houzz forums for a couple years. I am less active now that my home is close to completion. The build forum seems more appropriate for me now.

I believe anyone can register their business. There are a few rules, but the objective is that the "Pros" weigh in and offer their expertise to people who have "dilemmas." This perhaps showcases their talent and could potentially drive business their way. Win-win. But sometimes it's a bit iffy. My favorite one was the dude who photoshopped a grainy pergola onto the outside of literally every home where the owner was asking for help with the exterior. I don't think he sold many pergolas, and they eventually asked him not to post anymore.

I flagged it, because it is clearly a spam: "contractorquotes.us" reports as VIRGIN ISLANDS (Thomas Jepsen) greatly doubtful.

"It can be very difficult to find a contractor willing to take responsibility for another contractor's work."

itrw, this is very true. I know I charge more to fix someone's
screw up.

I don't see the post y'all are talking about.
maybe it has been removed?

I don't get the whole "pro" thing here. I'm pro
member on other sites & had to provide
proof that I was a pro. I haven't really
explored it much here though.

best of luck OP. try to work things out amicably.

The work that is getting done - are you happy with it? Does it appear to be good quality?

If so, my best advice is to hang in there. I know it is frustrating. Trust me, I've been in your shoes. We built new too, and I sold a house and scheduled closing for several weeks after the date I was promised was the "worst case scenario". I told my builder from Day 1 I didn't want to have to move twice.

Yeah, I ended up moving twice. At the time I thought my head might explode. I hated my GC by the end.

So I understand. But if the work being done is being done well, hang in there and keep trying to work with this guy. There's no way you can fire this guy and find someone else to take over and make up time in doing so. You'll get bogged down in a million other things if you do.

Our builder would not give us a set time either zorro. He used our house as an ad to get bigger and better business... which he has now about a block away from us. Rumor has it that he is in trouble with that build- timeline, ability to provide the labor needed for the magnitude of the project, etc. The difference with that house and ours is that those people are young, socially connected individuals who are going to let everyone know what's up with this guy. He bled us incessantly by mismanaging our build and as a result he gave us back part of his fee. That was the only reason we did not fire him.

These guys really unfortunately have the upper hand in the middling stages. If it gets bad enough though, I would "go shopping" at least, and see where you stand.

People stop in front of our house and say how beautiful it is, and isn't so- and-so a wonderful builder, yada yada... We just wish we could let people know just how inept the guy was, but that is not going to happen in a front yard conversation through a rolled down car window.

Nobody likes being taken advantage of, or admitting it- but we do not endorse this guy, and karma is coming like a big, slow train around the bend (literally) for him.

A long time ago I hired a pool contractor to build a pool I designed. He wanted a deposit to begin and scheduled payments later. I made the payments as scheduled. The pool build went great until after the last payment. Suddenly I had sub contractors knocking on my door wanting payment. OMG! A huge nightmare resulted. I fired him, of course. My son, an attorney, wrote a letter for me to post on the pool equipment. Cease and Desist. Another contractor finished the pool at additional cost, and I learned a big lesson. My attorney son assisted me in reporting the bad contractor to the contractor's state licensing board. There were 4 others in my boat. He left all of us hanging and we did get some money from his bond, but not near enough.

We will hang in there, it does appear that after my husband's "talk" with him, it does seems things are beginning to happen. What upsets us is that my husband had to blow his stack at the builder to get him to get things moving. That should have been happening. We do know our builder was working on a multi million dollar house while ours sat in limbo. But, hopefully we will get the house done.... In our lifetime:/

We were facing a similar situation and we finally decided that we needed to have weekly meetings. We told him that we did not feel as though things were progressing and when to expect what and that it would be in the best interest of all parties to meet once a week and address any concerns. It has certainly not been smooth sailing by any stretch of the imagination since then but at least I know if a problem comes up or if things are not happening on time I will be meeting with him on Tuesday and can bring it up.

Couldn't Suzi have demanded lien releases from the subcontractors before she paid the pool contractor? Anyone building should receive lien releases from the subs all along the way through the building process, showing they have been paid and will not seek to file liens against the home owner.