Our remodel went south... like really south.

We purchased our house in September of 2016, gutted it in October and began renovations in late November. The expected move-in date was sometime at the beginning of the year (2017). March at the very latest. It was the perfect timeline for our June due date. I would have time to settle in, nest, and make our house feel like a home before Keller arrived.

By the end of February things started to feel like they were moving at turtle speed. We didn't think much of it as we know there are parts of the renovation that are slower than others especially when you get into the finishing phase of things. Those steps take time and attention to detail so we chalked the slowness up to that.

In March, J stopped listening to our instructions, needs and wants. For example, we told him not to touch the outbuilding and just get the inside of the house done so we could go ahead and move in. Hello being homeless and living at Daron's parent's while 6 months pregnant!!! We were ready to move in already! What did J do? Tile the outbuilding. Now we are thankful it is done but at the time it was very frustrating.

Mid-March we started noticing some issues with the tile... and the tile guy... We started asking questions about the work and eventually told J to let the tile guy go and we would find someone else. This tile guy's work was not up to our standards, nor was his attitude or work ethic. J didn't like the tile guy but also didn't like that we were going to find someone else.

Really bad tile work from one of J's subcontractors.

I personally think I could have done better than that and I have zero tile experience!!! We later had to bring someone else in to take all of this out and start over to make it look right.

J moved onto refinishing the wood floors while we found someone to come in and fix the tile work. He got the floors sanded down in no time and they were looking great! We were finally feeling like progress was being made until we showed up a couple of days later to find him literally slopping stain all over our floors. They looked HORRIBLE. We asked questions, wanted to know what the end result would look like and if they were "fixable". He said that was the way stain was done and it would be fine. It was not fine. They dried and we asked him to sand them down and start over. He rented a sander and slowly started sanding them back down.

Sloppy stain work. Note the stain on the baseboards...

At the end of March, Daron left for a 3-day work trip. It was my job to go check on the house daily to make sure progress was being made (remember when I shared the tip for daily check-ins - this is why!). Carla, Daron's mom, and I went to check on the house the first day Daron was gone. We pulled up and she said "is J's travel trailer supposed to be here?" My heart immediately dropped. He was gone. I immediately knew he left the job. His bad work and bad attitude left me to only believe that he threw in the towel and quit.

I called Daron balling, sent him pictures of the shape the house was in (see the pictures I sent to him below). I was devastated and Daron was beyond mad at J.

Speaking of sloppy stain work... I guess this is how they cleaned their hands.

We were "waiting on" the sunporch windows to arrive. We later learned they were never ordered.

Other side of the sunporch... wide open to the great outdoors!

The back of our house was totally open and exposed... No windows, no door. Peep our bathtub sitting outside.

Bathroom with horrible tile job waiting to be re-tiled.

Note the boarded up front door and sanded floors.

No front door either... The floors partially sanded down to try again after a horrible stain job.

Our kitchen left un-done with all of our nice appliances sitting in it with no way to lock them up!

While our house was totally open and exposed, J demanded that all of our appliances be installed so that he could build the cabinets. (This isn't necessary for a cabinet builder who knows how to do it and measure, just an FYI.) You can see his poor attempt at building our cabinets here.

I think this was due to not sanding well enough on the edges. Once it was sanded down correctly, we didn't have this problem.

A sampling of J's very terrible and gross stain job.

Daron made some phone calls over the next few days only to find out that not only did J leave, but he also left with over $15,000 of our construction budget in his pocket that he was supposed to use for supplies (such as our windows) that never got ordered. He also had equipment rented out in our name that was past due that had to be returned immediately. Let's just say this was worst case scenario for us. I was 6 months pregnant and beyond emotional, he was away on a work trip and not able to help return equipment and could only workout so many details over the phone. It was just as awful as it sounds, hence why I am writing about it 3 years later! It took a while to recover from it and be able to write about the situation without using bad words!

It seemed like every day we were discovering something else awful J had done in addition to leaving the job and stealing money from us. Three days into our discoveries we also found out he called the storage container company where we had literally ALL of our belongings stored on the property and told them we were finished with it and they could come pick it up. Daron spent weeks cleaning up the messes J made on our behalf.

This is where ALL of our belongings were stored while our house was under construction.

Now when I see blue shipping containers I cringe... brings back bad memories! I cried happy tears the day this moved off of our property a few months later.

I was so upset that I basically couldn't function. Emotions were high and as someone who likes to resort to her own space at home, I had no comfortable place to go. My mom ended up coming to get me to stay with them for a week while Daron was gone on his work trip and sorting things out from afar. This was by far the lowest point of our remodel.