Dunrite Construction Inc.

Bobby Ashley/Dunrite Construction is a one owner/two worker company and was hired to do a major renovation on 7 rooms and 2 baths. He morphed into our worst nightmare.

During contract negotiations, he was very amicable and promised many things. He left a legacy of lies and broken promises throughout our 5 month renovation.

Within 48 hours from starting the job, he was back needing an additional 5 thousand dollars because he found something (that frankly, with all his self-claimed experience in our development, he should have known about.) We compromised to do the work at 3 thousand dollars, but that would be the last compromise he would make.

He insisted on a schedule of payments by date but refused to tie them to completed work points. We noticed work seem to drag until nearly all of those payments were made. Worse, water was kept off, toilets were not installed, and we were still waiting for a working kitchen. In other words, our condo wasn't livable until.....

He demanded nearly an additional 6 thousand dollars. He was instantly paid, but then was subsequently questioned about various items when we frequently asked and he finally submitted a crude bill two weeks later. Many of these items were already covered in the contract, i.e., he double billed, some were for charges we never knew about nor approved, some items we were charged but hadn't asked for. Bobby just felt they were needed, yielding him increased labor charges - ie, profit.

When questioned about some of these charges, he felt we should just "pay them, be thankful and keep our mouths shut" (Yes, he actually told us that.)

Worse, he literally walked off the job. He had received all scheduled and non-scheduled payments but didn't like answering questions about those extra charges. He quit. He only came back when we conceded to his extortion. In essence, he renegotiated the contract in the middle of the work. No doubt he has done this before and will continue to do so. Given the state of the construction, in retrospect, he behavior was predictable.

There were an equal number of things he didn't do but never gave us any dollar credit for them. HE declared it all a wash with everything he did do.

We found his skills in woodworking, painting, and plastering good. His skills as a plumber were amateur (there were several leaks or really slow working drains!) , and as an electrician - laughable. He made statements about some of the electrical issues that were straight out of mythology or old wives tales.

His estimate of materials was often 20% more than needed, rather than usual 10% and some of those materials disappeared when he left. During the job, he tried to sell us some stone for our fireplace that he said he had 'leftover' from a previous job. (We choose other stone.)

Although he was asked, he never submitted a final bill, nor any of the supplier bills we paid directly to him (architect, cabinets, flooring, kitchen counters).

He was prompt when the job was ongoing, but now that he feels he received all his money, he doesn't return phone calls. Can't depend on him for the one year warranty on his work as mandated by state law.
We called or wrote several times about small warranteed issues. We never heard from him again.

My wife discussed that we were interested in renovating the kitchen sometime in the future and wanted to discuss his ideas. He told us that it would be a simple job and he could do it all for $60K, because he had a connection with a cabinet company and it would only take 4-5 weeks. We expressed to him that we weren’t sure, but wanted to remove a wall he said wasn’t structural so we could open up the area before planning the cabinets. He came July 6th to remove the wall and when I came home from work everything was gone. The wall, cabinets and flooring. This could not have been a misunderstanding because we expressed to him several times “just the wall”. I believe he did this so we would have no choice but to move forward. He said he thought since my wife had met with his kitchen design person we were moving forward. He then informed me that we had a problem that the wall he just removed was structural and that it would need beams to support the roof and it would be another $10K. At this point we had few options and felt we had to continue. On July 11th, he gave us a contract with a cost of $88K and told us it would not be done until October. The increase, he said, was because the cabinets we were looking at were the most expensive cabinets that Kraftmaid makes and would be $43K. The cabinets were being done with a lady named Debbi Washburn at Pro Builder in Mahopac, NY. We received a letter from our town building department telling us to stop any work. Mr Ashley said to just call and tell them is was a kitchen remodel and assured us that we didn’t need a permit. He went so far as to get annoyed that we requested that he straighten out. On July 17th, feeling concerned but backed into a corner with the lack of a kitchen for almost 3 weeks we gave him his starting fee of $20K and $20K for cabinets. He placed 2 beams to support the roof. For the next 3 weeks, Mr Ashley would have a single worker at our house for about 3-5 hours. He was never on site and only met with us 3x during the entire time. He never completed the demolition, but had a worker snake wires for lights and outlets behind the sheetrock. When we discussed this with Mr. Ashley he said that the insulation that was installed 30+ years ago would be fine. There is a skylight that his plan was to just place sheetrock over rather than remove. Even though we told him that it had been leaking for years. August 3, we still didn’t have final cabinet plans, so we went to a different cabinet designer and had plans by August 5th. We also went to Home Depot and built the same kitchen with Kraftmaid cabinets and their estimate was $23K. So this is when we started to fully understand the scam we had gotten ourselves into. We told Mr. Ashley that we had to order cabinets and that we wanted the 20K we gave him for cabinets to order them from the other company. He told us that we had already spent all the money that we had given him including the money for the cabinets and if we wanted him to continue work we owed him another $8K. We refused and he left.
We had the kitchen evaluated by a structural engineer and the beams are not connected as one unit and are buckling, but worse he placed the beams on horizontal 2x4s that are bending and cracking. There is supposed to be a post at each end from the beam to the foundation which he didn’t do. The joists are simply nailed into the beams with no other supports. The basic evaluation was that with strong winds or a good snow storm the roof would have collapsed if we had gone forward. We contacted Mr Ashley and he offered to give us 5K back, but we told him that was ridiculous and that 20K was designated for cabinets and none of the work was done properly. We received no documentation that the electrician or plumber he had at our house was licensed. He said he discussed the plans with an architect, but after speaking with his architect, he stated that Mr Ashley never discussed the structural beams.