Build America

I used Qemal/​Build America to do a complete renovation on a house in Largo I was fixing up to sell which turned into an absolute nightmare.
Although Qemal was very nice and friendly at the beginning of the job, he became extremely defensive and hard to communicate with as the job progressed.
There were too many things we were unhappy with to detail but I will mention the major problems we had with him.
# 1) Poor Quality of Work. All of the windows on the house were replaced but because they were measured incorrectly there were gaps letting air in. He claimed he didn’t measure it wrong but his own workers said he took the measurements incorrectly. Rather than returning the windows he just filled in the gaps with caulking.
His painters did not mask anything off so there was overspray everywhere. Instead of replacing rotten wood he just painted over it even though it was in the contract.
There were numerous other small details such as holes in walls, cracking in drywall, doors not fitting correctly, etc. but that was nothing compared to the things you couldn’t see. See below about property inspection.
#2) Double Charged. There were several items that were listed in the contract that we were charged twice for or had already paid which we did not notice until later.
The worst was when we had a property inspection prior to selling the house, There was a huge list of items that needed to be repaired. Although, these were items that were in the contract he actually charged us to come back and repair them. Because the sale of the house was pending on these repairs we agreed to pay them.
#3) Changed Terms of Our Contract and PLACED A LIEN on our Property!!! About 4 weeks after we signed the original contract and agreed on the total cost of the project he said we needed to have additional work done that he never mentioned before.
We agreed to the additional work but said we didn’t have the money to pay him now but we would as soon as the house was sold. We both agreed on those terms.
When we complained to Qemal that were unhappy with the quality of the work and how far past the completion date the project had gone, he got extremely defensive. Communication basically stopped at that point until we received a «Notice of Lien» on our property.
When I reminded him of what he agreed upon, he basically said he didn’t like us complaining so the terms have changed.
#4) DID NOT GET PERMITS!!! Even though it was in the first line of the contract that he would get all necessary permits, he never did. We did not find this out until the sale of the house which ended up costing us a significant amount of money to correct. When asked about the permits by our real estate agent, he completely lied and said that we said we didn’t want them (which makes no sense).
My intent in writing this is that anyone dealing with Qemal and Build America know what they are possibly getting into if things go wrong. He is a very friendly guy and he did in fact have the lowest price compared to other contractors but in the long run, it ended up costing us much more money than if we had gonne with someone else. Like they say, you get what you pay for.