Business ProfileforWood Run Renovate & Repair LLC

In November of 2020, the basement in our fourplex flooded on the weekend before Thanksgiving. We had a mitigation/cleanup company come out (Service Team of Professionals, or STOP) to clear the water and sanitize the basement. They in turn recommended Wood Run Renovate & Repair to rebuild the basement, which had to have a good amount of framing and drywall removed due to the flooding. The basement contains our community laundry room, the furnace room, and one of our rental units.While STOP was still cleaning up, **** from **** Run came out, walked the basement with me, took notes, and created an estimate for the rebuild of the basement. For the rental unit (502 sq ft) plus the laundry room, open common area, and the storage closet to have some framing replaced, some drywall replaced, flooring replaced, and the bathroom and kitchen rebuilt, the estimate was $40,000. We made it clear from the outset that the only money we would have to pay for this was the insurance settlement.Meanwhile, it was taking a long time to get the claim paid by Travelers because the owner of STOP was not communicating with us. In **** admittedly a long time after the initial conversation, **** Run began emailing me invoices in the amount of $6,100 or so, which was a deposit that I had apparently agreed to pay during the estimate process. No matter how stressful the situation, always read any document very carefully before signing it. I didn't realize that what I signed committed us to pay **** Run whether they ever did any construction work for us or not.In April or **** **** Run began emailing me invoices and demanding payment. I didn't see these at first, because I receive hundreds of messages daily in my inbox. I also work 10 hour days, M-F. After I didn't respond to the emails, they mailed me a paper copy and threatened legal action. Again, we had told them previously that we needed the insurance claim money before we could have them do the rest of the work. My wife ***** and I decided that in light of our expectation to have **** Run rebuild our rental unit in the basement, we would give them their deposit to stop the messages clamoring for the money. In retrospect, I should have realized that it was a bad sign that they were pushing so hard for our small deposit. She took a check out to their office in June, around the 10th.When ***** went to their office and told them we wanted to get work started, she was told that they would need to send **** back out to the house. **** Run did not follow through with making an appointment. On July 5th, Sharman at **** Run contacted ***** and informed her that **** was not able to get a permit for our reconstruction. Previous owners of our home (the house was built in ****) divided the single family home into the fourplex it is today. **** was reporting that the permit office would not ***** the permit as the basement was not up to current safety codes; and the permit office, according to ****, would not ***** a grandfather permit . I feel like this could have been communicated in January and saved everyone a lot of trouble. Once we were told about the lack of permits and **** Run's inability to rebuild our rental unit, we decided we just wanted to get our money's worth out of the $6k we had spent. ***** emailed, texted, and left phone messages a few times, but we received no response through July and August.Finally, on September 7, we went together to ****************** Keep in mind that at this point I only wanted to get some sort of work for the $6k they had. For many people this is not a large amount of money, but for us, it is. We met with Sharman, the company owner, and ****, who had originally done our estimate. After they spent five minutes or so telling us that the lack of communication was our fault and that "customers go back and forth about if they want work done all the time," we told them that since they couldn't do any reconstruction of the rental unit, we would be fine if they could just repair the framing and drywall that had been cut out because of the flooding. **** said she would try to have an estimate for us on the following Friday, but could not guarantee it. We didn't receive it, so ***** went back out to the office the following Tuesday. After a few more days, we received an estimate for $8700. The area we needed repaired was mostly some 2x4's that were removed and about two feet of drywall at the bottom of each wall. The former rental unit's kitchen area required more, as the mitigation company had removed the drywall up to the ceiling.I thought the amount was a little high, but as we had already paid the deposit, we would only have to come out of pocket for $2700 and we could get some work done and be through with all this. Our final straw with **** Run came when we were told that Sharman had decided that the $6k deposit was going toward "overhead and estimates" and that we would have to pay the full $8700 in addition to the deposit. **** didn't even come out to the house for the second estimate.So that's it. Perhaps all of this is reasonable and I dont understand the reconstruction process, but I am thoroughly dissatisfied with the entire process, beginning with their poor communication and blaming that on us, charging thousands of dollars before doing anything (other than an estimate), and ending with them keeping that deposit and determining that they had done enough work to use it all.