Should I Sue My Contractor?

This is going to be a long one, but hang in there.

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In August of last year we had a whirlpool tub crack and leak water into the downstairs office. Mitigation teams were called out to deal with the water damage and they ended up tearing up the ceiling of the office and both the bathtub and the floor of the shower in our master bathroom, leaving me and my husband with no upstairs shower.

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A little backstory - we have tenants/friends living in our downstairs basement. At the time of the incident, they were living here rent free because my disabled father was also living with me and I agreed to let my friends live here for a year with no rent because they had just moved here from Texas and were trying to save money and build credit to buy a house as long as they helped me care for my father. They did so and it was overall a great deal for everyone involved and I'm happy to have been in a position to make that arrangement with them.

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So there are three full bathrooms in my house - the basement bathroom that my tenants used, the main floor bathroom that was my fathers (and needed to be available at all times because when he needed to go he needed to go and he couldn't do stairs and was 100% oxygen bound), and the upstairs master bathroom - the bathroom that is no longer useable.

After the bathroom got torn apart, we had to start sharing a bathroom in the basement. My dad's shower was converted to be an elderly walk in tub so it wasn't even really a viable option for us to use because it took too long to fill the tub and my dad used the bathroom on average once an hour.

We called out our favorite plumbing company to survey the damage and he recommended a contracting company. Owner of the company, Mario, came out and met with me and I showed him what I wanted to do to the space, let him know how much insurance was willing to cover and let him know what my budget was for the remaining work. (The existing bathroom had a shower smaller than most closets and a bathtub that could have fit 8 people comfortably, and that was not serving us so I decided if we were living through construction I might as well pay the extra and get a bathroom I wanted out of it complete with a bigger shower, smaller tub, and some semblance of storage space.)

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Mario came out and seemed very agreeable at first. I told him what my vision was - showed him what vanity I had picked out, photos of what I was hoping to accomplish, and basically my list of priorities in the build out. The entire time I was speaking to him I was making sure to say "this is what I'm hoping for, but if that's not reasonable or doable just tell me and we can adjust." I am aware that I am not a contractor and if a professional tells me there are fundamental issues or complications with what I'm requesting, I can easily pivot to plan B or plan C. At no point did he say "whoa, I don't think that'll be doable" or "If you do x we'll need to do y and z which will cost v" - he just kept saying "Oh yeah, we can make that happen. That sounds good. Ok, perfect."

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He wrote me out an estimate for 18k over what insurance was covering. It was steeper than I hoped for but I was going to have my dream bathroom at the end so I took the financial blow and agreed. The contract that I signed also stated in no uncertain terms that the estimated time for the project was 2-3 weeks. Which, from my research, sounded about average for what a bathroom buildout took.

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December 27th, Mario and company came in and did full demo on the bathroom. Full demo in this case included removing the toilet, though after us expressing that sharing a restroom with my dad was not really possible, he did put the toilet back in place and we had to do the awkward skip down the stairs holding our hands up so we didn't touch anything so we could wash our hands in the kitchen sink after every trip to the restroom for two months. After the bathroom was full demoed (we're talking to the studs + giant holes in the floor) it was almost an entire 3 weeks before they even returned to start anything. Already well past the initial estimate of time.

Everything got worse from there and I'll summarize the rest with cute little bullet points for simplicity.

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• They would not give us any indication of when they were coming or when they were done for the day, meaning our dogs were in their crates way more than necessary because they have stranger danger and because of the location of the bathroom and the access points to the house there was no safe way to have the dogs out while the crew was present.
• At no point did Mario create any kind of a draft of a floorplan with the information I had given him. He took no notes at our first conversation where I told him what I was looking for and he said "YEP WE CAN DO IT NO PROBLEM." As more time passed and more subcontractors got involved, I found myself having to remind Mario of our initial conversation a lot. Things like a nook in the shower for shampoo bottles, the glass enclosure for the shower being a full enclosure instead of partial, etc. - sometimes these reminders came too late and required something to be redone, which he of course blamed me for even though I had mentioned everything up front. I literally had a list of bullet points I had walked through with him at our first meeting. I'm very organized and thorough with stuff like this so the fact that he had the nerve to try to blame me for him forgetting or neglecting to write anything down is beyond me.
  
• My biggest want with the bathroom was a "wet room" type of design that had a glass wall/door encapsulating both the shower and the bathtub. I wanted this because I also run a dog rescue and giving puppies a bath would be so much easier if I could just enclose them in the shower area to dry off and suds up. If you know, you know. When I first showed him inspo photos and explained to him what I was looking for he enthusiastically said "oh, yeah, I got a glass guy I can have set that up for you no problem." But he seemed to completely put that out of his mind and then acted like it was a huge deal when I reminded him about it. He behaved as if this was an entirely new thing that I was springing on him. It wasn't. This was part of the mock floor plan I had literally texted him on day one. So then it became "well if we can't do a shower pan, we have to tile the floor" (WHICH I HAD ALSO REQUESTED IN THE BEGINNING). and then "the bigger the floor tile the better" turned into "we have to use the smallest tile possible in the bathroom because the tile guys have to slope the entire bathroom floor to the drain now since Megan doesn't want a shower pan. Keep in mind, I never said I wasn't ok with having to step into a shower over a short tiled ledge... I just wanted the floors and walls to be tiled and to have it enclosed by glass. Had he said to me "it's going to be 5k more expensive to slope the floor" I would have said oh no that's too much, what are the other options -- but never did he discuss options with me. Never did he discuss that any of these things that I was reminding him of were going to cost more and more money. It wasn't mentioned until after it was done and the money was magically owed.
• There was a nearly 1 month delay for the tile work because the tile guys just straight up stopped coming because Mario hadn't paid them. They would show up at the house and say "Mario said he can't pay us because you haven't paid him -- leading to me showing them the receipts and text conversation where it showed we were paid up -- leading to them literally leaving saying they can't do work that they're not being paid for (understandably.) 20 minutes later Mario called us and lied to us saying they had something come up and couldn't make it to work on our project today because he didn't know we just sat on my porch and had a conversation about it. When we tried to call him on the lie he got beligerant and started yelling at me and telling me I kept moving the goalposts and it was my fault everything was taking so long.
• When we started this project I bought everything up front. Tub, vanity, shower head, etc. -- Mario picked it up himself stating that he wanted to "have the measurements" and kept it at his shop. Somehow, despite the fact that the vanity was sitting in his shop since January, he did not give the plumbers the correct information when they came to do the rough-in plumbing in February - so the plumbing was set up incorrectly for the vanity and needed to be completely redone, which was a cost that got passed down to me. An extra 1.6k to redo the plumbing for the vanity. When I asked the plumbers why they didn't do it correctly in the first place they said that Mario had told them the plumbing wasn't changing from the original vanity (not true, the new vanity we got is VERY different.) -- so now again because of Mario's inability to communicate, I'm out an extra almost 2k on top of the extra 5k from the tile work and 1k from switching our order to a different tub because he insisted a tub that took a month to be delivered would delay the entire project and then they didn't even TOUCH the newer more expensive tub until 2w after the original tub would have been delivered.
• His original estimate stated "supplies and labor", therefore leading me to believe that the cost of all the tile, grout, drywall, etc. would be included in the 18k price point. Not according to all the photos of receipts he sent to me and the fact that I had to order the tub, the vanity, etc. all out of pocket and STILL paid him 18k+ -- His original contract also did not mention anywhere that subcontracting work would need to be paid separately, but somehow his "glass guy" that installed the glass enclosure for the shower charged us 2k on top of everything else, too. I'm literally hemorrhaging money.

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This entire situation has caused me so much turmoil in my life.

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• We own a dog rescue and I foster pregnant dogs and litters of puppies. I said no and turned down SO MANY FOSTER DOGS during that time period because I didn't want them to have to give birth through the stress of construction noises. We finally said yes to an urgent case in late January and those puppies were born, raised, and adopted without ever being able to be bathed in a tub because this project has taken so long. Dobermans are not kitchen sink dogs and having to bathe them in the sink was a nightmare.
• My dad was hospitalized twice with lack of sleep being a contributing factor both times because he lived through two and a half months of not being able to sleep during the day because of the construction noise. The second time he returned from the hospital it was on hospice care. I couldn't have family come and stay with us to say goodbye to my dad because I had nowhere to put them because all of our bathroom stuff was in the one spare bedroom and we couldn't have MORE people sharing the downstairs bathroom.
• My dad passed away a week after returning home on hospice care. I still could not have my family come and stay with me and help me in the wake of my father's passing because I had no bathroom or spare bedroom for them to use.
• I run two side-businesses. One of which is dog-sitting. My summer calendar has been filling up for months, but in January when I started saying yes to the spring/summer dog sitting requests, I would never have dreamed the construction would still be going on. I've had to call people and tell them I can't watch their dog that is terrified of loud noises because my house is still regularly burdened with the sounds of drilling, sawing, tile cutting, etc. - I've probably lost $3k in revenue from those cancelled appointments.
• My other side business is an actual retail shop that I run online. We closed down orders in January because the spare bedroom that got taken over by bathroom stuff was also our office for product manufacturing, shipping, etc. and it's not a functional space with all the bathroom stuff in there. Literally at times theres just been a toilet sitting in the middle of the room. It's not a useable space. 3+ months of lost revenue from that business is probably close to 3k at this point as well.
• Since my dad passed away and my tenants hit the year mark, it became time to start collecting rent. I can't yet collect rent because they don't have their own private space because my husband and I have to keep coming down to use their bathroom and I can't move my stuff upstairs because the spare bedroom is still full of the bathroom stuff, the office still has a big hole in the ceiling with debris falling through constantly (thankful my dad isn't still living in that room, to be honest. I'm sure the constant debris wasn't helping his lung diseases). They agreed to pay half of what rent would be until we no longer have to share their private space with them. That's about $400 a month I'm losing out on while this project is still going, so approximately $1200 now.
• My husband and I have both used more than 5 days of PTO a piece taking time off to be here to let new subcontractors in or receive deliveries being sent to our house, or just be present so we could talk to the team and get a status update. I'm not sure the monetary value of that loss, but it's there.

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When i started to get frustrated with Mario about the crappy communication, the length of time everything was taking, the lying, etc. - he got very defensive, told me it was entirely my fault, took zero accountability, and basically said he wanted to only talk to my husband from then on out. Since then, we have more than 4 recordings of Mario standing in MY LIVING ROOM talking shit about me to my husband. Literally trying to bro out with him by being a misogynist mf saying stuff like "women getting involved in stuff like this is always a nightmare" and my husband saying "no, she's been pretty consistent the entire time." or "no, I get why she's frustrated".

All of the subcontracting companies he's been working with have informed me that all he does is complain about this project and how much money HE'S OUT because of it. All of those contractors have also informed me that they will never again do business with this guy because of how unprofessional he's been through everything.

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That said, as of today, the bathroom is still not done. In two days it will have been 4 whole months since this "two week reno" began, and almost 8 months since the inciting incident that caused the damage. We're definitely nearing the end, but knowing him, he could ghost me again for another week before finally coming back and finishing - if he comes back at all.

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All in all the project cost $9k more than what was estimated at minimum (and not including all the big ticket items we had to buy that we expected would be a part of the "supplies" in "supplies and labor", has taken 8x the amount of time originally quoted, and cost us an additional almost $10k from ongoing loss of profit. In addition the emotional and mental toll that this has taken on me, and that it took on my father before he passed away, is something that I will never forgive. The way that this guy just could not give a crap less about how much he's destroyed my life over the last 4 months is baffling to me. My last days with my father were filled with so much stress about contractors coming in and out and disturbing his sleep and impacting his ability to visit with his family, etc.

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I've been told that I should take him to small claims court and sue him, but I don't really know if it would be worthwhile to do so or what I would even sue him for.

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Any advice appreciated. Or even if you don't have legal advice but maybe you have construction experience or experience doing a bathroom reno and can either commiserate or tell me that there's no way in hell this project should STILL BE GOING ON, that's welcome, too. I'm at my wits end and I don't know how to proceed.

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Thanks for listening, reddit.

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