DISASTER. Turn and run. We hired Joe for a large 203K project. We had problems from the very…read morebeginning: he was slow to start, kept changing his mind about the game plan, complained about the fact that he could get no money up front--terms of the 203K that he had of course agreed to--and pressured us to give him significant up-front money to "help him start". He instructed me in June of 2024 to rush to buy materials for a small bathroom that was still mostly unfinished in April of 2025; that kind of thing happened multiple times. His workers were inadequately supervised, and he was difficult to reach, often saying things like I'm at a kid's soccer game, out to dinner with my daughter, etc. The way that 203K's work is that HUD inspectors come out at regular intervals to make sure that adequate work has been done to make a draw from the total budget. Joe did a bunch of stuff merely to look busy to justify the first draw, in August: a slap-dash exterior paint job over crumbling paint that made a mess and did not hold, for instance. Between the first and the second draw, there was slow but meaningful progress--but by then we were 5 months into a job that we were told would take 4-6 months, and nowhere near done. During much of that 3-month interval he had just one guy working on our huge project, an electrician. After the second draw, in late November, he basically just stopped working on the house. We were making double housing payments the whole time, of course, so we panicked. We were almost out of money. After numerous calls and messages failed to get him to pick up the pace, at the urging of our lender, we scheduled a third draw, 3 months after the second one. At that draw, the HUD inspector certified that no work had been done, so no funds would be paid out. That's when we finally worked up the nerve to fire him. It was terrifying, because our lender told us that we would have trouble getting anyone to take on such a large project with only what was left in the budget after Joe depleted it. By the grace of God, we did find one. He swept in and got the job done in about 4 months. We finally moved in almost exactly one year after closing. Of course we had two mortgage payments the whole time. The work could have been finished within 6 months, or close to it, if we had found a great contractor like the one we found after we fired Mr. Depiano. Working with Mr. Depiano was harrowing. We were newbs at this, and therefore easy to fool. DON'T MAKE OUR MISTAKE.
