Business ProfileforGround Up Contracting, LLC

During construction we experienced many delays and set backs outside of what was initially promised. Unfortunately we have had many issues that we had to have repaired and fight to get the contractor to return and we are dealing with some major issues. Items of concern door frames installed to the point that we cannot open vanity drawers, we have had kitchen counter tops uneven, plumbing issues with ejector pump, frozen kitchen pipes found no insulation around water pipes they were laying on other side of the insulation against metal, several roof leaks which have not yet been fully resolved contactor coming again for the seventh time to fix we have drywall damage, promised insulated garage doors did not receive put blame on company that delivered product we spoke to local company which provided information disputing contractors claim, was to do grade work had to hire someone else to do. We had to clean all the trash from construction site, we found buried nailed board and other debris all over our yard. Contractor had multiple other things popping up including two exclusive vacations which we feel he was using our funds to pay for and we got shafted. We will paying a mortgage and may have to finance an additional loan to have our home feel safe to live in.. We don't even feel comfortable selling this place to another person. As a young adult I was ahead game by owning my land for 3 yrs and installing a septic thinking I was doing good for myself and future wife. We are blessed to now be married but our first year has been full of alot of homeowner nightmares. We are unsure of how to pursue anything legally it is all overwhelming and due to the current market and mortgage rates we can't afford anything else. Shame on this contactor for taking advantage of people hoping it doesn't happen to others.

I want to start off by saying it is very disheartening that you chose to leave such an extreme review filled with several false claims. We have been in communication this entire time and I have been more than willing to work with you to resolve any issues, so I truly am at a loss for words. I feel it is necessary to address each claim you have made in order to protect my reputation as I am a young small business owner that takes pride in my work and values each one of my customers. I have built a successful construction company from the ground up and I have always ensured that my customers have had an excellent customer experience. I would also like to make it very clear that a contract was signed by the homeowner that included everything that was delivered. There was no start date or completion date specified in the contract. This house passed every necessary inspection for them to receive a certificate of occupancy from Sussex county therefore it is SAFE to live in. (I have copies of everything if needed). I do want to apologize for any frustrations that you experienced during the build of your home. Almost all of the frustrations were caused by things truly out of my control but I still took ownership, maintained communication, addressed every issue and paid out of pocket to make sure the unforeseen circumstances did not reflect badly on my work. As the builder, there is nothing more I wanted than to make sure the process was simple and a great experience for you. As you were a friend of a friend, I was excited that you gave me the opportunity to build one of my first post frame homes. I will disclose that you were well aware of this and my price reflected as such as it was significantly less than any other quotes that you received. You agreed to the set terms and a contract was signed. Below are each claims made by the homeowner and my response to each one. I have spoken to the homeowner about each claim that he made and he agreed that he shouldn’t have made this review. I fixed his roof despite this review and told him that I planned on making sure that we could talk through any other issues that he had. Since then, the homeowner has not answered my calls or text messages. There is nothing else I can do at this point, but to try and explain this situation. Please read through each one of my responses if you are doubting my companies integrity. “During construction we experienced many delays and setbacks outside of what was initially promised.” A set completion date was never stated in the signed contract. We did initially quote “about 3 months” verbally (which we do now quote similar builds at 6-7 months), to build this type of home. However, I do apologize for the unforeseen and uncontrollable delays such as materials, multiple weeks of rain and snow, owner falling ill to covid as well as a bad ankle injury. If we were able to get the job done in the initial time frame it would have landed Mid February of 2022. Unfortunately we were not able to get you your Certificate of Occupancy until April 6th of 2022. Delays were always communicated with full transparency throughout the entire build. “Unfortunately we have had many issues that we had to have repaired and fight to get the contractor to return and we are dealing with some major issues.” There were no major issues with this house as it is built to code and passed all required inspections in order to receive a Certificate of Occupancy. We do agree that there were minor issues that needed to be fixed. However, never once was there a “fight” to have anything repaired. We have been more than willing to fix anything that needed to be because we truly care about the quality of our work and the satisfaction of our customers. We paid out of pocket for labor and materials for anything that needed to be fixed. All repairs were fixed in a timely matter despite my businesses very busy schedule. “Items of concern: door frames installed to the point that we cannot open vanity drawers” I do apologize that you feel that the “door frames” were installed incorrectly, however, all frames were installed plumb, square, and level. I do believe that you are referring to the bathroom vanity that you purchased. I informed you that the vanity was too large for the area. We explained to you that if we installed it all the way to the wall as you requested, the drawer would hit the trim. Despite our advisement not to do this, you asked for it to be installed anyways knowing that it would not fully open. “plumbing issues with ejector pump” When we were notified of the clogged toilet by the homeowner, we paid for a plumber to inspect and fix the issue. Plumber had informed us that it was due to homeowners flushing wipes that clogged the ejector pump. Therefore, this was not an issue we created but we still paid for it. “frozen kitchen pipes found no insulation around water pipes they were laying on other side of the insulation against metal” We do apologize for this incident but the night your pipes froze it was 7 degrees without the windchill and in the negatives with the windchill. There were no burst pipes as we use PEX piping. Simply leaving a sink dripping during extreme cold weather could have prevented this as many homeowners follow this practice. “several roof leaks which have not yet been fully resolved contractor coming again for the seventh time to fix.” We do agree that there have been roof leaks and we truly apologize for the inconveniences this has caused. Once we were notified of the initial leak, we did try to fix the original ridge cap twice with new expanding ridge cap foam. Unfortunately, they do expand with heat (according to metal supplier Ridge and Valley Metals) and these were installed during the cold weather. So on the third time, we decided to pay our metal supplier to custom make a wider ridge cap along with new foam to finally remedy this issue. We were just informed on June 21st that there was a new leak in a different area. Due to the expected rain for the next several days, we had to schedule the fix for June 29th. On Wednesday the 28th, we came out for the 4th time and found that it was a faulty washer on a single screw that caused the issue. We took our time and inspected the roof and tested with high pressure water to make sure there would be no future leaks. “we have drywall damage” I do apologize about the drywall damage caused by the newest roof leak. I planned on paying to have drywall fixed and painted once new leak is fixed. I have tried to reach out to you to schedule this and have received no response from you. “promised insulated garage doors did not receive put blame on company that delivered product we spoke to local company which provided information disputing contractors claim” In the contract it stated that all of the living space would be insulated. It does not state that the garage doors would be insulated as a garage is not living space. “was to do grade work had to hire someone else to do” Exterior grade work was never included in the signed contract. The only grade work included in the contract was for the interior concrete. “We had to clean all the trash from construction site, we found a buried nailed board and other debris all over our yard” Trash was never expected to be cleaned by you and we planned on doing all of the cleaning once the project was complete. This was an active construction site that you chose to go to and clean on weekends when that should’ve never been done. We did a final clean up of the property in which we have a receipt from another contractor that we paid for the trash removal. “Contractor had multiple other things popping up including two exclusive vacations which we feel he was using our funds to pay for and we got shafted” Although I don’t believe a contractor needs to disclose what he spends his personal funds on, the use of contractor’s personal funds have no effect on the final project’s price as this is determined before starting the project. These pre-planned vacations also had no effect on the time frame or final product delivered because there were subcontractors working during that time. You were not shafted in any was as you agreed to the price of the home when you signed the initial contract. Every item on the contract was delivered and any issues were resolved and paid for by me. You also told me that the price was significantly lower than every other bid you received.

To start with, I have gotten more of a response from you since posting on the BBB site than any other time. Only telling a very small part of the truth is equivalent to telling a whole lie. We have the pole barn to show as proof behind why the original post was written to begin with; we can easily show whoever would like to see it. Nothing in our original post even touches the terrible craftsmanship and quality of work that we received from you. We were not “well aware” that this was your first “post frame home” until last week when you finally admitted it over the phone. The “contract” that was signed was a materials list with a round-about price… shame on us for trusting you. This process was the complete opposite of a “simple and great experience”. The project was to begin at the end of October 2021 and take 3 months… verbally spoken or written down, are you always going to go back on your word? Your claims of bad weather and material delays are true to an extent but absolutely incorrect on being the only reason for delays… I believe the biggest delay was from your lack of working and being on the “construction site”; showing up after 10:00 am and leaving before 4:00 pm on days you decided to show up doesn’t show very good work ethic for a “young, small business owner”. How many times did we or our family members wait around for you to show up just for you to never show? Too many times to count. Back to craftsmanship… you can see from the exterior of the pole barn that the whole building is uneven, on the interior, the walls are not straight, the counter tops in the kitchen are crooked and not properly installed on the cabinets, there is something under the plank flooring in the bathroom that has now caused a crack in the plank, the windows were never sealed (we had to fix that), rain was coming in from under the front door (which we fixed ourselves) and caused us to have to replace the trim due to it expanding and molding, and the list goes on. With that being said, we have been told by 3 other certified contractors that the apex of the roof should not have a 6in gap; this gap is the reason why the ridge cap does not work properly and you have been back multiple times to correct it. In reference to the drywall issues you’re talking about - if you were so worried about fixing our drywall for this most current leak, you would have most likely been just as worried about building the roof correctly to begin with. The “fight” we are referring to is the length of time it takes you to get out to fix a problem. On a brand new home, when there is a water leak issue and it is currently pouring down rain and it’s expected to rain for the next few days - doesn’t it make more sense to try to come out and fix the problem immediately vs. waiting a whole week to resolve the issue? You mentioned multiple times that you gave us a “great price”, lower than other bids that we had received, but that doesn’t mean we were supposed to be cheated out of a safe and disaster-free place to live. Also, you mentioning multiple times that things were “paid for by me”, is honestly irrelevant considering all of the issues we had, occurred within the first year of you building our home… I’d say these issues being fixed at your expense is pretty reasonable. The plumbing scenario you brought up never happened and was a bold face lie. The frozen pipe situation is undeniably from your carelessness… I thought it was common sense to put insulation between water pipes and an outside wall, PEX or not (we fixed this ourselves by removing your incorrectly installed tin and insulated the pipes). Some other things I’d like to point out include: my mom had the pull the building permit due multiple failed attempts by you and you not getting yourself to the county building, there was window insulation being installed in the roof ridge cap, you had someone clean up the trash on the property after your trailer got a flat tire from a board full of nails on the ground and you could no longer walk through the workspace, and you only “passed” for the Certification of Occupancy after several failed inspections with fees added on for failing and scheduling inspections you weren’t prepared for (some of these fails include: the roof trusses not being secured properly, not having the proper firewall between the house and garage, and not having a tempered glass window in the bathroom). We have pointed many things out to you and it was either blatantly ignored or followed by you blaming everyone but yourself, you’ve even blamed your own employees that were under your supervision. I don’t believe we were ever told that the vanity was too big and wouldn’t fit… you told us about the cabinet spacer after you installed it incorrectly. These things may not seem like “major issues” to you but to a new, just starting out homeowner, they are. I am also pretty sure that your comment “homeowner agreed that he shouldn’t have made this review” never happened or else this would have been deleted by now. There’s no point in going back-and-forth with you on this thread as it’s going to end up as a he said she said situation. -Jacob and Taylor Fletcher

You are correct, there’s no reason to go back and forth as I have documentation for everything I have stated. This includes the plumbing issue in which you said is a “bold face lie”. I spoke to Jacob about this, Taylor, and I can provide documentation from the plumber. The contract wasn’t a “material list and round about price” it was a set labor and material price that was given to and accepted by your lender in order to get a loan for that specific amount. The ridge cap is fixed. I do apologize about any delays but when it’s raining we are not able to climb on metal roofs. During construction it is normal for inspections to fail for small things and then pass once the corrections are made. For example, the issue with the truss connection wasn’t actually the trusses, but the hurricane straps. Hurricane straps are added in case of extreme winds in which they will help keep the truss to the header. These brackets have 10 nails each. The inspection did fail for this, as one of my employees missed nails in some of the brackets. I’m not putting blame on anyone, I’m just explaining what happened. Once those nails were added, it passed inspection. Which is the point I’m trying to make. Your house passed all final inspections, which is how you received your certificate of occupancy. I do not want to continue this on here anymore. I have once again reached out to Jacob letting him know we can still do a walk through and fix any issues of concern, but still no response from him. If you would like to reach out to me directly Taylor, please contact me. Although I don’t agree with everything being said, I do understand your frustrations and would like to try and resolve this. If you choose not to, unfortunately there’s nothing more I can do.