June 19, 2009

I should search his name more frequently. Apparently he has re-registered the Woodwright building supplies and the Woodwright homes business names. I take it he was tired of being fined for operating a business without a license.

For those of you who had dealings with Iain as a Woodwright customer you can contact the consumer protection branch of the dept of Justice if you have had problems and they might be able to help you now that the company exists as a legal entity again.

June 13, 2009

Here are some other links related to Iain.

Here is where he registered 2 companies for moving houses to the states and had his permit revoked. If anyone knows why I would love to know.

http://li-public.fmcsa.dot.gov/LIVIEW/pkg_oos_process.prc_list?pv_vpath=LIVIEW&s_state=SKCA

This one is Iain's new website I just love the pictures. Who exactly would buy cabinets from a company whose only real cabinet picture looks like it is not straight

http://www.woodwrightcabinets.com/index.html

May 9, 2009

As previosly posted in Tara's Perspective:  The cupboards in this house almost deserve a blog of their own, so they definitely should be at least mentioned.  Iain told us that he is a journeyman cabinet maker.  Perhaps he is.  I can’t say as I know for certain one way or another.  What I can tell you is that I have cupboards made by a company he was president of, and they are definitely not something to be proud of.  If my house is exemplary of what Iain Hall thinks is good looking cupboards, I would not hire him as a cabinet maker.  The cupboards themselves seem sturdy enough but the finishing work leaves a lot to be desired.  The hardware is crooked on many, if not all of the drawers.  Nothing is square.  In places were doors and drawers meet it is very apparent that things are not square.  The door knobs are not level.  There are gaps between doors.  Drawers when pulled out are not the same length.  Drawer handles are not at the same height across a bank of drawers.  Many of the pulls themselves are not level.  There are multiple screw holes in several drawer faces.  There are screws sticking up inside the drawers.  There are splinters in the wood.  Some of the doors and drawers do not close all the way.  All of the cupboards were supposed to have adjustable shelves but in one cupboard holes are only partially drilled on one side.  In one cupboard the shelf does not fit so occasionally it falls off the pegs.  Nope, if my kitchen is indicative of what Iain thinks is good workmanship, I don’t think cabinets are his true calling either.

Given the way my cupboards are, if the options are ones made out of "glue and sawdust" as he says on his web page, or have Iain do them, the choice might be tough.

April 29, 2009

This is the bottom bumper for the same door. About half of the doors have this problem, THey all have the correct number of bumpers but they totally miss the frame of the cupboard.

This picture is kind of hazy. It is hard to get a good picture from inside a cupboard. I noticed that some of our cupboard doors made a funny sound when you closed them. Roughly half of the doors did this. Tara and I always assumed that the doors that Iain bought where not glued together properly and as such they rattled. I finally got around to looking at them to decide if I could glue them to stop the rattling. I discovered that the reason they made this soud was due to Iain's inattention to details. The little silicone pads that are supposed to prevent wood from bashing on wood were in the wrong spots.

I sill remember asking Iain where the bumpers for the doors were. I even said that if they were here Iain could leave them behind and I could put them on for him. He said something about how expensive those were and he could not just give us some. He would come out and put them on for us as we were not qualified. Apparently Iain skipped the bumper putting on class when he went to school. Iain, for future reference the bumpers on the doors have to line up with the frame of the cabinet. If you are in the process of dealing with Iain, make sure you look closely at the quality and the fine details as Iain definately does not.

P.S. I am not sure where you buy your bumpers from but you can get them for $5.00/100.

I am totally amazed at how many people are now aware of this web page.  I recently ran into a stranger who when I was introduced asked if I was "the Tara from badbuilder.ca."  A few weeks ago I met a person who told me that they had almost hired our previous builder to do some renovation work, but when she mentioned the name to a friend of hers was directed to badbuilder.ca  After reading she decided to hire someone else.  There is no guarantee she will not run into the same type of situation by hiring someone else, but there is no reason to repeat someone else's mistake. 

I was initially very concerned about Kevin starting this site (going public with one's story is always difficult).  I am pleased that people are being warned so they do not face the same situation we have.  There have been over 17500 hits on this site.  Keep passing this address on to anyone you know.  We can never know who is thinking of hiring someone to do work.  Knowledge is power!  Please help people to make informed decisions.  Thank you to each person who has taken the time to both read this site and to pass the address on to others.  The more people who know about how this all works, the more chance there is that laws will be created to better protect people and that the contracts will go to business people who are deserving of people's trust (and money). 

Take care,

Tara   

Here we are!  It's spring.  Time to start thinking about landscaping and yard work.  But wait, not at our house.  We need to start thinking about how to fix our deck.  Iain was paid to build the deck a specific size.  Unfortunately, he had that crew that couldn't read a tape measure.  The deck is not the specified size (for those familiar with this site, that shouldn't come as a shock) so it's too narrow for the table.  Oh well, I guess a different table could be used.  I am nothing if not flexible.  It's too bad that the width of the deck is the least of our worries.  The deck was supposed to have a piling underneath it.  There is no piling (shocking isn't it?).  I think we need to fix this.  Good thing we had such a great builder.  We get to further develop our talents! 

Our great builder (notice the sarcasm) did eventually get rails on our deck.  Check out other parts of the story for that fiasco.  Too bad one of them is pressure treated board and the other is not.  Just a hint for anyone building a deck, rails are not great if they are wooden.  Children get slivers from wood.  Iain prides himself on looking out for children (umhmmm).  He should have been here for sliver removal.  I guess while we are fixing other Iain mistakes we can deal with this one too.

I will keep you posted on the progress.

Tara  

 

SUN 5 APR

Spring means working on repairing the deck By Tara Garratt

Here we are!  It's spring.  Time to start thinking about landscaping and yard work.  But wait, not at our house.  We need to start thinking about how to fix our deck.  Iain was paid to build the deck a specific size.  Unfortunately, he had that crew that couldn't read a tape measure.  The deck is not the specified size (for those familiar with this site, that shouldn't come as a shock) so it's too narrow for the table.  Oh well, I guess a different table could be used.  I am nothing if not flexible.  It's too bad that the width of the deck is the least of our worries.  The deck was supposed to have a piling underneath it.  There is no piling (shocking isn't it?).  I think we need to fix this.  Good thing we had such a great builder.  We get to further develop our talents! 

 

Our great builder (notice the sarcasm) did eventually get rails on our deck.  Check out other parts of the story for that fiasco.  Too bad one of them is pressure treated board and the other is not.  Just a hint for anyone building a deck, rails are not great if they are wooden.  Children get slivers from wood.  Iain prides himself on looking out for children (umhmmm).  He should have been here for sliver removal.  I guess while we are fixing other Iain mistakes we can deal with this one too.

 

I will keep you posted on the progress.

 

Tara  

 

When I talked to some people about the inferior quality of the railing I was told by some that you should not use pressure treated lumber on a railing as the splinters were toxic. I was told by others that the only way to go was pressure treated as the untreated wood rots away. I would like to point out that we have one railing that is pressure treated and one that is not. I would not recommend either unless you like slivers. Spend the little extra and get the aluminum/PVC railings. Thanks again Iain, you have made it painfully clear that you should not have anything to do with building things. I wonder which type of wood was used on your house?   SUN 1 MAR Above the pantry By Tara Garratt This is the sight one sees above our pantry.  Goodness knows painting up there is hard, so really why bother, right?  Iain is not the only member of his crew who really does not care about quality work being completed.   My advice is, be wary of Iain's painter too.  Les decided that this was good enough to leave. SAT 28 FEB Broken doors By Kevin Garratt Apparently when you keep a door closed by running screws through it into the frame it splits the door making it impossible to adjust it enough to actually make it seal. Maybe the next door we use will seal.   Needless to say we were assured that this door would be replaced. Empty promise after empty promise. Can anyone suggest where to buy new doors?