Independent Construction LLC review: Room addition construction

Independent Construction LLC (Nate Stallings and his sidekick, Ruben) - never use this company!

We hired them to frame and finish our new family room addition - BIG MISTAKE! Not only do they not know what they are doing, they only show up for 2-3 hours a day and only work 2-3 days a week (if you’re lucky) and do limited work when they do show up! Our project that should have taken a few weeks was well into the 2nd month before we fired them. We asked numerous framers about our project and they said the framing should have taken no longer than 2-3 days. These guys were well into 5 weeks before the framing was “almost” complete. Yes we had some rain delays, but that would not have been an issue if they would have worked 6-8 hours a day! The would show up at 10am and leave by 1pm - having completed very limited work. Useless!

They lie about the work they do, they have an abundance of excuses as to why things are not getting done and they obviously have no idea how to frame. There are only 2 guys that show up - Nate (the owner) who does not do much but assist the other guy, Ruben who is a lackluster framer. HORRIBLE FRAMING - the window and door headers are not flush with the wall studs - causing a major issue with the drywall. Like the building inspector said, their work is below par and they definitely take no pride in what they do. They say they have other teams working for their company but that is obviously a lie. Despite asking about their other employees and having paid them additional money to hire more staff for our project - we never saw anybody but these two yahoos.

They messed up the roof with the trusses we ordered. We had to call in the architect and call back the building inspector to see the mess they made with the roof! They actually added tarps to the roof and nailed into our existing shingles! After we fired them we had to pay somebody else to tear off 1/3rd of the new roof and have it constructed properly. The roofers actually use the word “butchered” to describe the roof framing that IC did. They said that they could not believe we paid them! They also provided a detailed letter describing what they saw - so we have strong evidence. One of the attempts that they made to “fix” the mess that they made with the trusses and ridge line was to nail 1x2 strips and 1/4” plywood DIRECTLY ONTOP OF THE SHINGLES! Both the architect said this was not the way you do things. They said it could be a fire hazard and can also cause water build up and leaking roofs!

We can’t forget that did not use the sub floor adhesive that was purchased, they did not frame the closets up to the ceiling trusses, the did not attach the fireplace frame to the trusses and they did not add tack plates for installing the ceiling drywall. We also had roof leaks as a result of them nailing into our new shingles and 2 of the windows that they installed leaked due to the poor installation that they did. Then the $500 exterior door! They actually installed the door by nailing the exterior PVC frame with common nails! They did not use any screws into the door jamb! These guys do not know even the basics of framing.

Our solution was to finally fire them. If we had known how bad things were early on - we probably would have sooner. Most of what we uncovered came after the roof disaster and after firing them. We hired replacement tradesmen to finish out project - at additional cost. Per our attorney’s recommendation, we sent IC a certified letter demanding a refund on much of the money we paid them. We also demanded that the deposit money that we gave them for the drywall and finishing work (that they never started) be returned. We are still waiting for any reply or money. We expect that we will be suing them before this is over and done. It will be well worth our effort to get some resolve from this totally incompetent and unprofessional company.

DO NOT HIRE THEM! THEY ARE UNSKILLED, UNQUALIFIED AND UNRELIABLE.

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