• C&C Construction and Septic Services, bad company

    I am writing here to voice my frustration with C&C Construction and Septic Services at 35 Christopher Drive, Phippsburg, ME. 04562. (207) 751-3715.

    I hired these people to do four different projects in my house.


    1. Replace a piece of sheet-rock in the ceiling that was sagging from water damage and remove the popcorn style ceilings throughout the house and repaint them.
    2. Patch the walls and paint them in one of my bedrooms.
    3. Pull the rugs up in the house and put laminate flooring down.
    4. Replace three inside doors and stain them in the house and an exterior door.


    After talking to them in July they told me that it would take four weeks or less to do all of this. They informed me that they would not be able to start for two weeks. I was pleased by their timeline at the time this all took place because I was planning to put my house on the market on the first of September. Little did I know it would end up taking them over fours months. I was not living in the house so they had free reign of it.
    They ended up starting about a week and a half later then they said. I tried not to be a pain and check on their work because I don’t like people looking over my shoulders when I am doing things and I did not want to do that to them.

    After about a week they informed me that the ceilings were done and they were going to start on the floors. I went up to the house to check on the ceilings and was totally shocked that they said it was done. For one thing they never replaced the sheetrock that they were supposed to. They just screwed it back up and spackled it in place. There were spots that were not sanded or painted and the water marks they painted had bled through the paint. This told me that they had not put primer on before they painted it. There were seams in the ceilings that they were supposed to have retaped, spackle, sand and paint. All those spots had cracks through them. To top it off the seams going down the center line of the ceiling were crooked.

    When I called C&C Construction and told them about this they told me that his worker probably did not retape the seams and probably just put spackle and sanded it. He said he would have them retaped and done over again. I also told them about how crooked the center line was in the ceiling in the kitchen area. He said he would have the person doing the work redo it. I told him about the watermarks coming through the paint. He said he would probably have to put another coat on it. His excuse for the spots that were not painted was that the sun coming in through the windows made it hard for the guy to see where he painted. He said he would drive up to my house and check on this. He confirmed all these complaints and said he would take care of them.

    A week had gone and I was told the ceilings were done all the carpets ripped up to get ready for the flooring. I went to check on the ceilings again. The water marks had bleed though again and there were still spots that were not sanded and painted. The cracks were still in the centerline of the ceiling. I was not happy. When I told them about this they said that the water marks needed another coat of paint and the missed spots that were not sanded or painted were because of the sun coming through the windows. He confirmed that he would get this all straightened out.

    In the meantime he wanted me to pick out the flooring that I wanted. I found what I wanted at Home Depot and there was not enough in stock so there was a week delay and he pulled his guy from my house to work somewhere else. I questioned him about this because there was other work that still needed to get done that should probably be done before they started working on the floors. They still had to repair the walls in one of the rooms and paint them. He said he would get it done.

    After the floors came in and they started putting them in, I went to the house to check on the progress and discovered that the ceilings had not been done yet and that the walls in the back bedroom had not been done yet. These all should have been done before that started working on the floors. I have done contracting work before and I knew these should have been done. This way any work done above the floor would not interfere or cause damage to the floors. I also pointed this out to him again and he did not answer me this time. I was not happy. I also told them that the centerline in the living room was crooked just like the one in the kitchen was. He said he noticed that the last time he was down there and he planned on fixing it.

    Guess what, after the floors were all done they went back to finish the work on the ceiling and did the work on the walls and painted. You guessed it. They made a heck of a mess and got paint on the floor and the floor trim work and overpainted on a lot of the trim work. I also noticed and big chip in the floor where they had dropped a tool or something while they were working on the ceiling. I told them that I found a chip in the floor. They said they would take care of it. When I went back to the house the chip in the floor was fixed. I found that odd because I never told them where the chip was. That tells me that they knew about it and was hoping that I would not see it.

    The doors that they replaced turned into a nightmare too. I had to special order the interior doors because they were not a standard size. They stained the doors the wrong color and the stain was all steaked and not evenly stained. They screwed up the bathroom door and routed the hinges in the wrong location on the doors. They jury rigged their mistake. The bathroom door would not pull closed properly and I told them that in a phone conversation. He told me that it was because of the door frame being out of alignment. After going back to the house I saw the reason why it would not close. One of the screws in the hinge was sticking out ¼ inch. I called and told him that and he said he would take care of it. The next time I went to the house it still was not fixed and I told him the door still would not close properly. He said he screwed all the hinge screws in and it had to be because the frame was out of alignment. I told him that the screw was still not screwed in and he had better look again.

    He warned me that the exterior door would not close properly either and said he thought it was because of the way the door sits in the cement. At this point I was getting frustrated. I have installed doors before and you can always make the door fit in the frame of the house, that is what shims are for, shimming the door. I also noticed that there was a screw stinking out of the hinge about ¼ inch in this door too. After he fixed that the door closed but it would not close and latch properly with the door handle. I told him this and he blamed it on the door handle. He said it was the original door handle from when the first door was put into the house and that it was a different type of door handle and locking system that they stopped making years ago. I gave up at this point even trying to reason with him anymore. He had an excuse for everything he could not fix. I had replaced the door handle just a few years before so I knew he was full of crap.

    The last and final thing he was supposed to do was the trim around the sliding glass door and screen going to the back deck. I had pulled the sliding screen out of the door to replace the ripped screen and loaded it in my truck to bring back home to fix it. He was there the day I removed it and I told him to leave a space in trim of the flooring and the bottom rail of the screen rail so that I had room to put the sliding screen door back in.

    On the day he was supposed to be done I brought the screen back to put it in, the floor trim was all the way up to and against the glass door so that I could not get the sliding screen door back in. I was pissed. He ripped up the trim work and told me that I would have to get another piece of trim and fix it. He never even offered to come back and fix it. He told me that I needed to do it. I had had enough of his excuses for everything. I just wanted him done and out of my house that that I could put the house on the market. What he told me was only going to take four weeks or less had already taken more than four months.

    After he left that day I had to hire another contractor to come and fix the trim around the sliding screen door. I paid for something he was supposed to have done.

    Since he left the ceiling seem cracked again. He said he stands behind his work and will come back and fix anything that does not stand up or is defective. I got a hold of him about the ceiling cracking again and he of course had another excuse. He said there is an underlining problem there that is unseen that is not his fault for the ceiling cracking. I had a drywall person look at the ceiling and they told me it was because it was not done properly, with the proper material. He offered to send me money for my inconveniences. I got a check in the mail for $210. That leaves me about $5 left over after the cost of getting the trim work repaired for the sliding screen door. I still have to get all three interior doors re-stained, the exterior door fixed and the cracks in the ceiling fixed properly. I don’t think $5 is going to cover that.

    There is more to share but I think this is enough. If you hire C&C Construction and Septic Services after reading this, it's your own fault.

    For anyone thinking about hiring C&C Construction and Septic Services, please reconsider. They take four times the amount of time they say they’re going to take. Their work is half ass and not done correctly. Save your money and the frustration that it is going to cause you. If I had known what I was going to have to deal with these guys, I would have happily paid more money and got a better contractor to get the job done and done right.
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