Gary J Lopresti Jr

Gary had done handyman work for us for many years, and we have in the past given him a positive reference for contracting work based on our experience. We then engaged him for a large piece of work involving building a deck, renovating a kitchen and a bedroom, building a closet in another bedroom, replacing windows and some smaller tasks

We could not have ended up more disappointed. Gary has completely disappeared, leaving some aspects of the work inexcusably incomplete, after almost a year. The kitchen cabinets he installed, for example, are still supported by visible shims.
 

There are spaces between the cabinets that he was to have covered or turned into vertical storage for baking trays, that are still untouched. In the process of building the closet, which he promised to complete in one week in August but which stretched to February, he covered over one of the few outlets in the room; he was supposed to bring in an electrician to install a new outlet, but that never happened. When the dishwasher had to be removed temporarily for a new countertop, it was not installed straight and, as we found out after the brand-new dishwasher stopped emptying, was installed incorrectly. There are more instances, but that should give you the idea

As a construction manager he also failed to make the grade. We never received any indication of his costs as the project went on, just requests for progress payments. We never, especially as the project began to drag, months after it began in May, received any schedules. That would be ok if he had finished the job, but he didn’t, and we have no way of knowing whether we owe him or he owes us. In fact, when we wrote to Gary asking him to finish the incomplete tasks we asked him whether we needed to pay a bit more to be fair (not suggesting that he owed us any money) his response was not to respond. We have not heard from him again – he even left such construction debris as six large windows that had been replaced, which he was contractually obligated to remove, sitting in our yard.

We know that some of the delays were due to him having taken on too many jobs, and others to family issues that popped up, and as we thought we were friends we were quite tolerant of this. But in the end we have been ignored and abandoned. We tried to get in touch since he disappeared – the first time he ignored us, while the second time he said he’d be back in touch “on Friday” but that was weeks ago.