How this all started

A little over two years ago my wife and I looked at each other and decided that we wanted to keep living in Abington, MA, and raise our family. Abington is located about 20 minutes south of Boston and is considered a great community for young families. We had been living there for over ten years and with great neighbors the choice for us was simple, instead of moving, we would build an addition on our existing home.

We hired an architect, who drew up plans and we started looking at home improvement contractors.

From the beginning we knew we would have to stay within a budget and we built a cushion into the amount of money we would be able to afford. Most contractors we interviewed at the time were either too expensive or booked up to the point that work would not start for quite some time. It was at this time that we were introduced to Dan Stanton of Stanton and Sons Contracting.

Dan Stanton showed up at our house one night in November, 2006. Our first impression was a good one. He was attentive, asked good questions and communicated a desire to work for us. Dan stated that this would be his first big project since his main area of expertise was going to beThe Timber Room line of products. The timber room is a one room addition with exposed timber beams. According to Dan, this was something he was looking to do big time in each state, but a project such as ours would be able to show that he could manage projects of all sizes while keeping his standards high.

Dan looked at our plans and came back to us with a price. It was substantially lower than any of the other quotes we had received. Dan explained to us that he was not big operation with much overhead. He could work with subcontractors to do work like the foundation, framing, etc., so he could negotiate lower prices. He said he passed on those savings to us with the lower price. Plus, successful completion meant we could throw a lot of business at him. After getting a couple of other quotes from bigger contractors, we thought it over and asked for a proposal.

At that time I checked with the Better Business Bureau, the state licensing board and found no complaints registered against him. I could not find anything negative on his contractor license.

My main sticking point was to ensure that ANY change orders be done in writing. This language was put in the final signed contract. On January 18th, 2006, we put a deposit on the work to be completed and signed with Dan Stanton

Please Read This First!!!

Before I start on our history with Dan Stanton I need to state the following.

1. This blog is a place where I can easily show someone what not to do and what actions should be taken in the state of Massachusetts if there are problems with a home improvement contractor.

2. This blog is to chronicle our story and to raise awareness about homeowners who have to deal with bad contractors in Massachusetts.

3. This blog allows me to take action with my situation and chronicle the difficult task of fighting for my family.

4. One should consider this blog a public service announcement about bad home improvement contractors. One should not take this blog to mean that all home improvement contractors are out to rip them off. It just seems the bad outweigh the few.

5. The best thing you can do before any contract is signed is contact a lawyer and have the contract reviewed line by line. I can not over-emphasize this point. Paying a lawyer to review the contract would have saved us some pain in trying to make this work. We did not do this and why we did not will be discussed later.

I do not know how this will turn out. My goal is to make Dan Stanton take responsibility, or at the very least explain what went wrong with the project.

If you wish to share your experiences with us, then leave a comment or send an email. I would be happy to discuss this with you. That goes for you too, Dan.