Update on Winans Construction Saga

Well, update might be a little bit of an overstatement.....

Still have not heard back from them after many, many attempts at contacting them.

How could such a fancy-pants high end award winning business treat me this way?

To review, signed a contract with Winans Construction for $9k where they were supposed to design our top floor and kitchen and deck and provide us with permit-ready drawings. Half way through the process they realized that they weren't going to get the construction part of the job and basically stopped caring about it. They dropped off the supposedly finished set of permit ready plans and have been pestering me about the final $2500 due. I've shown the plans to 5 general contractors, two architects and one structural engineer who all agree that the plans are far from 'permit ready'. When I went back to Winans with these issues and proposed fixes they basically told me, 'We're the experts you are not we think the plans are fine as is pay us now!'

I spoke to our friend-neighbor-fellow house blogger Ayse from Casa Decrepit about the situation. She is unfortunately an expert in getting screwed around by contractors.

Her take was that they have decided that I will not sue them over the $9000 as its not enough money to bother hiring a lawyer for and all that. And ya know, she's right.

Its going to cost us ~$6k additionally to get someone else to finish their plans.....so I guess I just gotta sit back and take it right?

NOT!

I've left them very non-complimentary reviews on Angie's List, Yelp, and I'm trying to get onto the Berkeley Parents Network to leave a review for them there also.

Can anybody think of anyplace else I leave reviews that'll get read-be influential? They have a myspace and facebook pages but I don't belong and I don't really feel like signing up just to leave my review on their pages? But if other people wanted to leave notes on their pages saying something like, "Stop screwing around the Chez Neumansky folks" or something like that I wouldn't mind.

Several of the local TV stations have a 'on your side' segment. Maybe I'll try them next?

Ayse pointed out that they are a 'Diamond Certified' company.

I contacted the folks that do the 'Diamond Certifying' and they are going to attempt to mediate the dispute. Maybe they'll get someone at Winans to respond. If Winans Construction does not respond they'll get their Diamond Certification pulled which is probably the most I can hope for.

Well, at least now we have someone in our corner working to help solve this impasse.

I told the Diamond folks that I either wanted Winans to finish the contract or return all my money.

Is that fair ya think?

We Finally Heard Back from Winans Construction!

Well, sorta....

Its been a week since I sent my last letter, where I tell them that I had better hear from them or else the next thing they are going to be hearing from me is my lawyer...as in the deadline is officially past and here's what I get in my email from them...

Winans Construction wins 2010 Regional Contractor of the Year (CotY) AwardThe National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) named Winans Construction, Inc., in Oakland, CA, 2010 Regional CotY (Contractor of the Year) winner in the Residential Interior $100,000 and Over category of its annual awards competition. The award-winning entry was the remodel of the circa-1908 Alameda home of Celeste and Sam Tamura. Their small upstairs kitchen had been in need of an update for years, while other areas of the house were less than optimal. "The awkwardness of our kitchen kept us from entertaining as much as we would have liked," says Celeste, "We had to cook upstairs and bring the food downstairs to our guests." Read More.....
Winans Construction, Inc.3947 Opal StreetOakland, CA 94609(510) 653-7288info@WinConInc.comwww.WinConInc.com
Winans Construction is a 32-year old design-build firm specializing in major residential remodeling projects in the East Bay, San Francisco and surrounding areas. The company has received numerous local and national awards including the highest recognition for quality achievement in the remodeling industry-the coveted National Remodeling Quality Gold Award.KITCHENS · MASTER SUITES · ADDITIONSBASEMENT CONVERSIONS · BATHROOMSFor more information, visit our website, or

The project this letter is talking about is the one in Alameda who's references we checked and also the project where I said if Winans could show me the stamped set of plans from that were as bad as the set they are trying to pawn off on me that I'd drop most of my issues.

This email looks like it came from the top guy there too.....

Does this seem like a big F-U to you? It kinda seems that way to me.

They are ignoring all my requests to fix our dispute and instead they send me an email about how this project won awards?

Still No Resolution on the Design-Build Front...

Okay so I've been waiting patiently for over two weeks to hear back from Winans Construction about the letter I posted about last time.... No joy, as of yet and I'm reaching the end of my rope, so I sent them one last nice letter, which is below.

It’s been over two weeks since I sent the letter below. I’m resending it now in case there was some sort of email error.

I would appreciate a response as to what you plan to do to remedy this situation ASAP. As always, I can be reached by phone at the number in my signature.

I’ve done some digging around in the cd-rom included with the documents. I found the engineers missing 4th drawing in its raw jpg format. It would appear that it was just left off the final plans?

I’ve done some preliminary checking and even with me fixing all the issues in the plan set with Chief Architect it will cost me much more than I owe on this contract to have another engineer come along behind yours and finish the work. This is not an outcome I will be particularly pleased with.

If I do not hear from you and we do not have a satisfactory solution worked out by the end of the week expect to hear from my lawyer soon after that.

Daniel Neumansky

As the letter above states I did find the mystery roof framing plan that all the GC's I've been talking to were asking about. The call-outs in the plans actually refer to this drawing! So, it looks like Winans Construction just forgot about it!?!?!?!?! I also found the cabinet schedule on the cd-rom now if I could just find the finish schedule somewhere that would be awesome.

I just love how the drawing is broken up into two separate drawings that the designer at Winans Construction has to then paste back together in the plans and make them look professional...though I honestly have doubhts that hand-drawn plans can be ever made to look professional...

Back half of the house...

I'm starting to get seriously grumpy about this...it seems more and more obvious to me that Winans Construction was just hoping that I would go away and forget about this?

Readers, am I being somehow unfair in demanding that they finish the contract we both signed and agreed on?

Am I asking too much? Geez...

Yet More Troubles in Design-Build Land

Got a letter in the mail today from Winans Construction from the big boss.

Why they felt the need to send it snail mail is beyond me. I'm not going to transcribe the entire thing but the gist of it is......

We're the pros you're not and we think the plans are fine as is pay us the money now!!!

That kinda chapped my hide a bit as I believe that I have several legit concerns that they are just glossing over....

I sent them the following email just now, we'll see how they respond.

Having received Garys letter today I thought it prudent to clarify a few things from my earlier emails. The following is the complete list of issues I have with the plan set and the design contract in general.

Plan Set Issues: I am willing to entertain the idea that the 4 independent GC’s who looked over your plans and who all basically had the same issues are somehow wrong. You have recently done a house remodel in Alameda correct? If you can show me the set of plans for that job stamped and approved by the city and the cities engineer and those plans are not significantly different in detail-style, i.e. the engineers’ plans are hand drawn with no dimensions and missing sections I will concede most of the points below.

Plan Set Issues:

Engineers Plans: I understand that there can be back and forth with the cities engineer regarding the engineering portion of the plans but I believe my issues are separate from that.

E1) The final engineering plan shown in these documents is not the plan the engineer and I settled on and is not what I believed I was paying for.
E2) The engineers’ plans do not appear complete. The call-outs reference parts of the plan that are not shown. Call outs A, B, C, D are not shown in the engineers framing plans. It really appears that the engineer simply forgot to include the roof framing plan in this set as these call outs would seem to reference this. Do you realize that he doesn’t even call out the size of the parrallam ridge beams anywhere?
E3) My concern that the plans being hand written and hard to read several of the post call-outs are incomplete.
E4) Why are there no dimensions on the engineers plan?
E5) How is the engineers wet stamp not included in the price of these plans?
E6) Where are the engineers calcs that have to be included for permit submittal?

General Concerns:

G1) It looks to me like all the plans need to be ‘cleaned up’ there are spurious dimension lines, and dimensions, on the 2nd floor demo plan, the 1st floor construction plan, 2nd floor construction plan (G), and (H) is misnamed 2nd floor construction plan when it should be 2nd floor electrical plan. I mention this as I believe that these are the kinds of things that will get it kicked out of plan check in a hurry.
G2) The lack of a real zoning/planning set of plans. The zoning set is significantly different than the permit set I do not understand how you can consider them to be the same.
G3) Where are the details for flashing the doors and windows and roof?
G4) Where are the details for flashing the doors and windows and roof?
G5) Is there going to be an insulation plan?
G6) The electrical plans were much too cluttered-trying to show too much on the same diagram.

General Design Agreement Issues:
D1) From your letter I do not seem to have in my files your section E-1. If this was done it should be a simple matter of printing it out and sending it on or emailing it to me.
D2) Where is the finish schedule. I believe that part of this process was to spec out all the finishes with costs, I do not have this in my files.

I can not consider our design agreement fulfilled until all the above items are corrected to my satisfaction.

For future correspondence please reference my concerns by item number, i.e. ‘We are discussing issue E1 with the engineer and will get back to you asap’ While I understand that several of the above items can be considered a matter of opinion E1 and E2 certainly are not.

Respectfully,
Daniel Neumansky

If Winans Construction will not make good on the above issues we are kinda screwed. I've already got a rough estimate from another engineer and its going to cost at least $3000 to have him redo-check-complete the existing engineering plans....this is more than I owe Winans Construction to complete this agreement.

I'll have to create the zoning plan set myself, I'll have to clean up the permit set myself. I don't really want to do this as one, my time is precious and two, I think I've already paid them to do this for me.

Arrrrrrgh!!!!!

Irene and I sat down today discussed what we thought we were getting from Winans Construction with this agreement.

1. A complete permit ready set of plans. This to us means a really complete set of plans that have a reasonably good chance of being accepted as is.
2. A complete scope of work broken out with costs for each section
3. As part of the scope of work a finish schedule showing the costs of all the lights, tin ceiling, etc.

I'm willing to concede that what I thought I was getting is a bid-set of plans which is really what we need, but the wording of the agreement is for a permit-ready set of plans which has less detail.

We'll see how it goes. I'll keep y'all up to date.

Troubles in Design-Build Land...

So, the week after new years a box showed up on my doorstep with several copies of our house plans and a cd-rom of digital versions of such. I'd like to note that we were promised this box-o-goodies the week after Thanksgiving!! and had not heard so much as a peep from Winans Construction in the intervening several weeks....

I realize that none of this is going to make any sense unless you look at the drawings. If you right click HERE and select save target as you should be able to save the pdf versions of the plans to your local drive.

After finding time to look at the plans we had several concerns that we voiced to our project manager that weekend. The email is cut&pasted below.

Hello Amy,
We’ve had time to look thru the plan set in detail and have some issues with what we are seeing and a couple of things that we don’t understand.

Plan Set Issues we have noticed so far.

Engineers plan is not what we decided on still shows new footing in radiant heated areas.

Concerned that showing the proposed deck at the back of the house will be an issue-confuse the planning and building dept people.

The plan shows the proposed rear deck starting 2’ in from the side of the house; we need it to start at the edge of the house and use the 2 existing columns.

Concerned Engineers drawings will be too light for city to accept. I have been chastised in the past for drawings where they thought the lines were too thin-too hard to read.

The engineer’s wet stamp is not included in price? How can his stamp not be included in the price? We do not understand this.

Your note says that we have 2 copies of the planning plan set and 3 copies of the building permit plan set. What I see is 5 copies of the building permit plan set. It is our understanding that the planning set should be different from the building permit plan set. I believe that the planning set needs to show such things as all exterior views before and after, and not show interior detail, the planning set might also require photographs of the exterior views of the house and the neighboring properties?

It looks to me like all the plans need to be ‘cleaned up’ there are spurious dimension lines, and dimensions, on the 2nd floor demo plan, the 1st floor construction plan, 2nd floor construction plan (G), and (H) is misnamed 2nd floor construction plan when it should be 2nd floor electrical plan. I mention this as I believe that these are the kinds of things that will get it kicked out of plan check in a hurry.

I’m sure that you are eager to bring this matter to a close, as are we, but these issues will need to be addressed to our satisfaction before we sign off on the project and send you the final check.

Respectfully,
Daniel Neumansky

After a week had gone by and I had not heard anything I resent the message and bcc'd the project managers boss. Here's the message;

It’s been a week since I sent this email and since I have not heard from you I’m resending it.

I’ve been looking thru my documents and I have a few more questions.

I don’t see where I have a broken-out quote for all the work shown in this plan? That would be the entire upstairs plus the entire kitchen area plus the new deck wouldn’t it?

Where are the finish selections defined?

I’m sure that you are eager to bring this matter to a close, as are we, but these issues will need to be addressed to our satisfaction before we sign off on the project and send you the final check.

Respectfully,

Daniel Neumansky

I pretty immediately got a reply from the big boss which was simply, that he would look into it and get back to me that week.....

Well a week went by and in that time I had other general contractors look at the plans and I sent Winans Construction this email.

I’ve had several local contractors look over the plan set you have provided me and there was a consensus of opinion on several issues.

The consensus opinion on the engineers plans were: Why are they not computer drawn like the rest of the plans? They are hard to read. The writing is not legible enough. Why are there no dimensions on the plans and the plans do not appear complete. They are all wondering about a roof framing plan and feel that the call-outs do not explain enough. In fact the ridge beams are not even shown in the engineers’ sketches? They are also wondering about the framing for the dormers with the swoop roofs. None of them can understand the need for the C 10 to be bolted to both sides of the 6by10 beam in the basement? They all felt that the city would not accept the engineers’ portion as is.

Where are the details for flashing the doors and windows and roof?

Where is the finish schedule?

They felt the electrical plans were much too cluttered-trying to show too much on the same diagram.

When asked if they felt this was a complete enough plan set to build the remodel they all said no. One said after looking at the plans for over an hour he’d probably have 40 questions for the engineer and designer of the plans.

Respectfully,

Daniel Neumansky

We have not heard back as of yet from the folks at Winans Construction....this is kinda bumming us out as they appeared to be stand up guys but there is sooo much wrong with the plan set that they sent us that I don't know what to do about it. The engineers plans are just plain wrong, not the plan we had decided on at all and the floor plans look more like a 2nd rough draft as opposed to a final copy.

When I hear back from Winans Construction I'll let y'all know what they say...

Its Time to Poop

Or get off the pot!!!!

Or the one with all the words and no pictures.

Visited our local building department recently to ask about how long permits are good for....

There's apparently a new rule. Permits are good for three years from their issuance date period. No exceptions, no way no how! I even pulled the outta work and new baby card and they wouldn't budge!

What that means is, that we have till October 2010 to final all our permits or they expire and we'll have to pay the fee's all over again and go through all the permit B.S. all over again!

The permits we have outstanding are, the foundation-entire bottom floor, the downstairs bath (which is on a separate permit don't friggen ask me why) and the radiant heating system...

Finishing all that stuff up is going to require a lot of time and money....I figure we have till spring to decide whether or not we are going to keep the house and get started on those permits.

The permit situation dovetails nicely into what's been going on with our design-build contractor. They've been sending me bills asking for the remaining balance and they are starting to get testy using words like 'past due' and what not. They're nuts if they think I'm going to pay them their final $2500 without them completing their punch list!

I finally got our project manager on the phone and we had a nice conversation about what deliverables we were waiting on. It was great where we had a difference of opinion where she was saying they owed us more than I thought! How often does that happen.

What's left on their punch list:

1. Complete design review plan set printed out, 3 copies each.
2. PDF and Chief Architect files of design review docs.
3. Complete permit ready plan set, printed out, 3 copies each.
4. PDF and Chief files of complete plan set.
5. Their infinitesimally detailed project budget.

This is for the plans for our 'dream house' the plan that is so expensive it will never be built!

What we plan to do over the winter is send out the permit plan set to as many quality framing only subs to have them bid the work. We will have them bid the 'shell idea' where they redo the roof, the earthquake retro-fitting, and all the changes in the exterior walls (changing windows, removing doors, changing doors etc). We will see what numbers they come back with to help guide our decision on what to do next.

If the costs with us GC'ing it and subing out the parts we can't/don't want to do are reasonable then we will seriously think about staying here and doing the dream build.

If reality bitch-slaps us in the face and we find out that we can't even afford to do the above we have yet another option.

Our design build firm is working up a quote to redo the entire process with our super pared down version of the house. They say it should only be an incremental cost because they already have the house drawn and we are not changing the exterior at all.

Super Pared Down Plan:

• No changes to the roof other than a complete tear off and reshingle-saves a ton in carpentry costs and no expensive earthquake retro-fitting.
• No bathroom in Tasha's room...she'll have to go downstairs.
• No changes in the exterior windows in kitchen area and removal of just one door.
• With no changes in kitchen area windows that means we go back to a simpler smaller kitchen idea.(and therefore cheaper) But we are still going to move the interior wall.

Now, if after all this and us GC'ing the project we still can't afford it, or it would still put us into the house for waaaaaaaaaay more than its worth, well then....we'll cry a lot until we figure out what to do next. We can always just pull the plug on this place and sell it as-is and try to buy a place that's 'done', but if you've read any of my 'knifecatching' posts you'll know that we apparently have very specific needs that are hard to meet.

I would like to have a nice livable house by the time Tasha is really running around...so that gives us like 1.5 years...

So, that's the plan so far.