My husband and I hired a GC to help us in the removal of the wall in between our kitchen and family room (technically just half of a wall). We really wanted to know if the wall was load-bearing or not because if it wasn’t, we were going to do the majority of the work ourselves. Our GC told us the wall was load-bearing so he gave us an estimate for the removal of a load-bearing wall of $6,600. He told us repeatedly (which we have text proof of) that these were just estimates and that we would obviously only be charged for the work that was completed. This estimate was also on the high end (he said) as it accounted for any possible issues that may arise.

No problems arose and we did the demo and some other things ourselves. Cut to the day that the framers were here to put in the beam, and our contractor comes up to me and says, “bad news, one of my framers just went up into the attic and told me that the wall actually isn’t load-bearing”. This was infuriating for a number of reasons but I looked at him and told him that we weren’t paying for a beam, framing labor for a load-bearing wall, etc., that A. We weren’t going to even use and B. For work we would have done ourselves. He assured us that this wouldn’t be the case.

A week later, we get a bill with no changes AT ALL to the estimate. After going back and forth, the bill dropped to $5,500. At this point, we wanted receipts from the subcontractors because we couldn’t trust a word he was saying. He didn’t provide them and just kept saying that the framers charged for a whole day and it didn’t matter that the wall wasn’t load-bearing, the $1200 framing charge was exactly the same as the estimate (seriously, how?).

I should also mention that my husband and I did the demo ourselves as well as set up and took away the waste, and our final bill he is trying to charge us is $4,440.

Does this seem justified, because to us, it does not seem justified at all and also, what should we do moving forward? We are not willing to pay for our contractors mistake and want to pay only for the work that was DONE, not for what it would have cost to remove a load-bearing wall.

Thank you!!