My Experience with Davis Caves builders

Our house as "finished" by Davis Caves builders.

It has been quite a time since the last post. Laura was hospitalized in August of 2008 with acute pancreatitis (idiopathic), she was in the hospital for 2 weeks and had a 4 month recovery time before returning to work. She was back in the hospital late spring 2009 with the same symptoms as well as severe ongoing pain, nausea, and other problems. Several trips to the Mayo Clinic later (after many doctors before the Mayo referral) it looks like she may be permanently disabled.

Davis Caves walked off the job in September of 2008 demanding that we pay them nearly $10 thousand dollars for tree removal. In order to force us to comply it turned out that he took money from the construction loan and did not use it to pay for supplies and sub-contractors as he was required to. Zelle Title of Springfield was managing the payments to him, and were required to obtain mechanic's lien wavers for all payments. They did not. In fact Marty only accounted for about $40k of the $80k he had been paid.

This first came to my attention via a call from the concrete plant regarding lack of payments from concrete delivered in early July and Davis Caves' lack of response to demands of payment. Marty first assured me the payment had been made and a week later we got the email saying he was off the job until he got the extra money from us. We quickly found that he had also failed to pay the septic contractor, nor had he ordered the windows with the window money he had drawn earlier. We were immediately on the hook for over $12,000.00 of unpaid bills that Marty had already been paid for.

Marty's argument revolved around the fact that he wanted the additional money and was not convinced by the contract he signed that stated the tree removal was included in the contract price. He could produce no evidence that we owed him this money, he even stated in a conference call with the bank, the title company, and myself that he did not pay these bills in order to put pressure on us to force us to pay him this additional money. To me this sounds illegal, but it turns out we are in civil contract law territory and the only way to resolve it is to take him to court.

The bank advised paying him off as the easiest way to finish the house. I was not ready to hand him more money and he refused to work on the house so the bank agreed to set up an escrow account to hold the money until he finished the job. Marty Davis agreed. A few weeks later when I had the money in hand he refused the escrow account, saying he wanted the money "up front, with no conditions" he now wanted the money with no promise of paying the outstanding bills or finishing the house.

I was about a week (Dec. 1, 2008 was my foreclosure deadline) from having the property foreclosed on via a mechanic's lien and could not afford to lose any more money so I paid the bills directly, contacted Marty, told him to take his $10k from what I paid, return my change and return to work. He promised to check his schedule and then asked for the remaining money for the septic system (it came in under budget, so he took the money to pay for the septic, forced me to pay for it again, and then wanted the money left in the septic line item that he had not already taken) I suggested we meet with the bank to discuss this and I did not hear from him again for months.

All during this time Laura was seeing specialists trying to determine why her condition was not improving and what else might be an issue. Since she was the one with the real job the last of our savings were used getting through the recovery period and two attorneys told us to expect to spend up to $60,000.00 to take Davis Caves to court, lacking that sort of money the suggestion was to finish the house and move on.

We did learn that in Illinois a mechanic's lien could only be properly filed within a certain number of months of the general contractor working on the job. Under legal counsel we waited for that time to expire before sending a letter to Davis Caves that we would finish the house with a different builder and pointing out that they had not accounted for $40,000.00. We had to convince the bank that Davis Caves would not be suing them for breaking the contract by paying someone else to finish. So while this contract sure seemed like it could not help us, it could still be used against us!

About the time the letter from our attorney was going out I started getting demands for another thousands more from Marty's primary supplier. Including about $9000.00 for the windows we had never gotten. They sent me copies of the bills on my "account" in the normal convoluted process for this industry they claimed it was "my" account, even though it said bill to Davis Caves at the top and the only reference to our project was a deliver to field. Even though I had the mechanic's lien wavers from Davis Caves for building supplies in excess of what had been paid, and was still owed the supplier claimed I had to pay them. He even explained that I could not see all of the invoices on "my" account, only the ones Marty told him to send. I asked about what was physically delivered to my job, versus what Marty picked up I was told that there would be a delivery fee listed for what they delivered, until I explained that none of the bills had a delivery fee on them. Then I was told that the lack of delivery fee did not actually mean they were not delivered, and I was told they had no way of tracking their deliveries and it was impossible to tell what was delivered to us and what was not. As the supplier was over an hours drive away, and everything I saw being delivered to the site (other than concrete) came in a Davis Caves vehicle I believe I had very few, if any, "deliveries" from them. But the game is played so that the supplier can force foreclosure regardless of these facts, except that he missed the window, Davis Caves had been off the job too long by this time to allow his claim to me (I think he has 2 years to get the money from Davis Caves).

I found it interesting that the next week I got an email from Marty offering to come out and do some work on the place as an act of "good faith" on his part. My attorney pointed out that if Davis Caves came on the property and drove a single nail, they could then walk back off and his suppliers would have the chance to put liens on the property. We had to decline this offer as he had shown himself not to be trustworthy.

Davis Caves did threaten to sue us for breach of contract if we hired anyone else to finish the house. They also fabricated a demand for payment for money they had received (over $16,000.00 that was the third payout from the construction loan) forcing me to spend a few hundred more dollars on a reply and proof that they had gotten the money (and cashed it) in early September of 2008. I thought this jab was really indicative of Marty Davis's true character. Either he was too stupid to know he had been paid over $16,000.00 or he was just making the claim to be vindictive, I do not think the bookkeeping at Davis Caves is that poor, or that he is stupid.

The price from our general contractor, Marty, for electric heat pump is $1600 over the budgeted amount for the HVAC. He suggests that we should hire someone else for the HVAC. We think that he does not want to be responsible for a warranty with us for 10 years.

He has also suggested that we find our own septic system contractor. We have a bid from a local contractor that is less than the budget line we have allotted, but it does not include the tree removal. So depending on THAT cost we may be on budget or over.

We got the shingle samples in the mail from Marty yesterday and they are asphalt, not metal roofing. On 2/27/08 I had gotten a price from Marty on what it would cost to upgrade to metal roofing and was given the figure of $2400. I asked him to add this extra cost to the bid. Now it appears that he did not do this, why he would ignore my request I am uncertain. Maybe he was afraid that we would be too happy at this stage. Also irritating is that about three weeks ago I emailed him with the direct question of whether or not he did indeed include this upgrade in his price and got the reply that he "remembered" the discussion.

So today it appears that we have at least $4000 to pay out of pocket just to get what we thought we had already taken care of in the budget. We still have not heard how much extra our electrical plan will cost. One is certain it will be more than the price we were given. Nor have we gotten fixture prices from the plumber.

I got the exterior doors picked up and delivered to Waverly today. The people who own the storage unit we are renting there very kindly helped me unload them. I could not have managed it alone.