My experience with Capstone Construction was one of the worst experiences that I have had with any service industry company - ever.
Capstone Construction was hired to construct an approximately 350 sf, $105,000 addition to my home; the addition was required to make my house more accessible for my wife who has several physical disabilities and suffers from the effects of stage 4 cancer and the treatments.
I was conned into what ended up being a very expensive scam; by the time Capstone Construction left the job there was an estimated $150,000 worth of defects in the new construction and damage to my existing home and property. I was lied to by Capstone Construction from the beginning, some of the lies were:
1.It was agreed that the construction would be completed in approximately 2 ½ month. It took nearly 6 months.
2.It was agreed that the job supervisor would be on site every day to verify that the work was being constructed properly and per the construction documents. The job supervisor did not inspect the work; If the job supervisor did show up he only showed once or twice a week for about 15 minutes; the job supervisor was unable to read construction documents or understand construction very well; if he was confronted with a construction error he would just come up with a line of B.S. and not address the issue.
3.Capstone Construction only uses top quality employees and licensed subcontractors. 7 out of 18 of the subcontractors were not licensed even though Capstone put into writing that all their subcontractors are licensed and bonded; A good portion of the employees and subcontractors could not read English or understand construction documents, most were just basically handymen; literally every trade produced defective work – a sampling of some of the defects are: excavator damaged the underground plumbing even after I had the utilities located, exposed rebar in the foundation, sloppy concrete finish work on both the interior and exterior slabs and walls, improper foundation work that is not constructed per the construction documents, framing that does not align from floor to floor, framing that was critical to be framed plumb and square that was not framed plumb and square at all, the roof was framed at the wrong roof slope, the wrong windows were installed and windows were installed at the wrong height, all of the hardwood and LVT flooring was installed improperly which voids any warrantees, all the door were installed improperly, improper plumbing installation that diminished any usable water flow to the hose connection, light switches mounted about 12” to low, improper HVAC ducting, improper exterior siding and trim installation, incorrect roof flashing, improper roofing installation that allows the roof to leak substantially when it rains, leaking rain gutters, improper attic ventilation, poor quality interior trim work, unequal rod iron baluster spacing at the interior guardrail, damage to existing tile and carpet flooring throughout, incomplete painting on the interior and exterior, substantial amount of paint on the new vinyl window frames, broke three interior stairs, and damaged two skylights. None of these or any of the many other item were corrected before Capstone and their subcontractors left the job.
4.It was agreed that Capstone Construction would completely seal off the existing house from the construction area during demolition and construction. Capstone Construction failed to seal of the existing house which resulted in the entire existing house and all of its contents being covered in an extremely thick layer of dust, this happen repeatedly. In addition there was no winter protection provided to the exposed living spaces during the entire winter.
5.It was understood by Capstone Construction that Capstone Construction was being hired to be the General Contractor because I did not have any time to devote to being my own contractor due to my heavy work load at my job as an Architect, and because of the time commitment required to assisting my wife. I ended up spending well over 100 hours of my time doing Capstone Constructions job of attempting to make sure that the construction moved along and was somewhat conforming to the construction documents.
6.I was conned into hiring Capstone Construction when they told me that they are fast and that they would give my job extra attention because of my wife’s health and her urgency to have the accessibility improvements completed as soon as possible. Capstone Construction was extremely unresponsive to any sense of urgency when it came to meet the agreed on completion schedule or to my wife’s needs; in fact just the opposite, they ended up scamming us.
I held back a portion of the contract funds owed while I attempted several times to work with Capstone Construction on compensating me for all the defects and damages; we agreed to mediate a settlement on compensation in good faith, however Capstone Construction decided to blackmail me into settling into being compensated for pennies on the dollar for the defects and damages or they would take me and my wife to court if I attempted to settle for more, they were fully aware that we did not have the time or the money to fight them in court.
So in conclusion, if you don’t want to be scammed and end up with substantial defective construction like we did, I would recommend that you not even consider Capstone Construction.
