Most contractors only offer one year of labor warranty. A good contrator wouldn't have done the crappy work that you've received in the first place, so even if it were still under his warranty, would you really want somone with such limited skills attempting to redo things behond that skill set?

Of course the reason he gets the Condo work is he could be sharing the profits with someone on the inside for the work. And as live pointed out you really may not even want him back even for free.

His responsibility for fixing deficiencies after the project is completed should be clearly stated in the contract. If not, your only hope is that there is a state warranty period requirement for all home improvement work.

If you have a contract, responsibility should be stated there. If you don't have a written contract, you might as well forget it.

The general standard for workmanship and materials is one year, unless specifically stated otherwise, such as some mechanical equipment may come with a 5-7 year warranty.

Good luck with your project.

Unfortunately, I was a fool & did not include a time period for warranty in the COntract. However, maybe that is to my advantage, because it does include "in a workmanlike manner" (As does FL law) and that may get me longer than a warranty period, which likely would have been a year.

What gets me is that I have seen this guy's work in other units & it is really good. We had a few "out of the ordinary" items for him to do, and he did them fine, with one exception - staining the wood. The other things that have gone wrong were pretty standard stuff, like installing wiring (When we tore walls down we found that the prior owner had wired the place in a manner not up to code - loose wires hanging everywhere. Stuff we could not have seen until we opened the walls.)

With the stain though, he used two people to do the staining - one guy's work is perfect. THe other is where the problem is. THe contractor actually fired that guy during our job & he brought in someone else to finish - but maybe the original guy had already caused too much damage. THe COntractor's response to my request that he redo the stain completely, and by the guy who did it right, is that that guy charges too much & he can't afford it. He offered to bring the guy in if I split the cost with him. As I told him, if it wasn't done right in the first place, that's HIS problem, not mine. He has to eat that cost. And thus we are at odds on that - him pleading poverty ("I had to pay tuition for my kid's private school," "my wife needed surgery and we don't have health insurance," etc.).

I'm tempted to go find a good electrician, bite the bullet, and then see what happens in COurt. He can't see that going to Court will end up costing him more than doing the repairs.

And the funny part - he just complained to me that I am publicizing the fact that he does shoddy work. That "publicizing" was to a couple of neighbors who remarked about the crappy stain work when then visited our apartment, and also at one point I asked the maintenance guy at our COndo if he saw our contractor, because he was supposed to come & see me but didn't. So I told the maintenance guy I was expecting the contractor but he didn't show.

Has he refused to repair the electric or look at the stain issue?

Two years have passed. YOU would be the loser if you attempted to take him to court here. It would cost you more in time and court fees that you would ever be able to collect. And that's if it weren't immediately thrown out due to the lack of paperwork and the amount of time that has passed. If you wanted the work corrected, it should have been addressed in a timely manner. I don't mean to sound heartless here, but you have to realize that you need to move on and address the problems yourself if you want them corrected. And do a better job of writing up a contract and checking references next time.

I began to address these issues with him two years ago - and have a good paper trail to show it. HE wrote up a checklist of what he still needed to do, and HE checked off items as he did them. That list still has the issues mentioned here unchecked. He has been stalling & stalling - constantly saying he is going to fix things, but then not having the time, or, in the case of the stain, claiming he cannot afford to fix it, but saying he'd fix it IF I split the cost with him. About a year ago, he did make a feeble attempt to repair the stain, but it made things worse.