Old houses aren't straight and they do have their problems with out of level. I'd want to know what the back story is on the sag in the laundry room first of all. It could be a symptom of a bigger underlying issue that needs to be addressed. You need to have a structural engineer inspect the home so you can be sure that it's not something major like a broken beam or foundation issues.

If you didn't specifically hire him to "level" the ceiling in the contract, then that's not a job that would have been on his list before the drywall went up. (drywall???what happened to the plaster and restoring it??) That is a VERY labor intensive job, as custom shims for every single joist have to be cut. Even then, a couple of years down the road, if the underlying issue wasn't fixed, things have a good change of becoming out of level again.

A lot of contractors aren't cabinet people. That's a specialty by itself. And when you do "cabinets to the ceiling" it it generally always helpful (especially in an older home) to have a compound molding so as to have the ability to "float" the top crown and hide that out of level ceiling. This requires slightly shorter cabinets than the ceiling (usually by at least 6") so you don't have "cabinets to the ceiling" but cabinets with molding that reaches the ceiling.

He should take down the cabinets and rehang them, better disguising the slope. After, of course, you've had the structural engineer in to figure out what the underlying problem actually is.

Casings in a home should be standard through the home as an absolute, not thicker in one area than another, without good reason for the thicker molding. Are you 100% sure that the casings are different thicknesses, and it's not the substrate that the molding is next to that is giving the illusion that one is thinner? It would be odd for him to purchase two different stocks for the two different areas. It's much easier to just purchase a lot of all the same thing. Trust your tape measure and not your eyes on this one.

Contractors have to have a place out of the weather to cut materials. That's just part of remodeling, even if it's an unexpected surprise for you. If you had not provided him with the garage, he probably would have had to cut the materials in your home. That would have been MUCH worse indeed. While it's reasonable to many contractors to include the services of a cleaning service post remodel before the homeowner moves back in, not all of them think about doing so. You might want to bring it up with your contractor, but if he tells you it wasn't in the contract to do that, then you'd need to pay for it yourself. If he had put it in the contract, you'd have ended up paying the extra for it any way, so it's not that big of a deal. Paying the cleaner directly cuts out his 20% markup on it.

For your next remodel on your home, you probably want to find someone who is more of an old house "restorer" rather than just a contractor who is used to working on modern homes with modern materials. And you'll be better educated as to what to expect when a remodel takes over your life. It's always dirty and unpleasant during the process and costs more than you ever thought you'd pay. Hopefully, the end product will be worth it to you.

R + 1 on the engineer. We are planning different renovations and a sag under a cantilever kept on rearing its head. Nobody working with us was willing to diagnose the cause and kept on saying get an engineering report on what was going on. It just isn't their area of expertise.

We went ahead and got a report, it cost $600. I'm glad we did it, because it makes talking about future work much easier when we all know exactly what has to be done. We will need to have about 2K of work done, but we planned in our budget for this type of thing. The last thing I wanted to do was have to have our new windows replaced in another 10 years because the wall continued to move. Since we are getting new siding too the repair wasn't so bad, because everything was going to get pulled apart any ways.

I'm something of a novice here, but here are my two cents.

I would have been very disappointed that he didn't call you when the ceiling slope was discovered and ask you how you wanted it dealt with. That said, I also believe it is incumbent on you, the home owner, to be on site or have someone you trust to make decisions on site at least twice a day checking on everything. That may mean skipping lunch, or prepacking a lunch and munching on it as you look over the work. But that way you can catch these things at the beginning instead of after all the work is done. If I were your contractor, I would be very grouchy if someone came in after all the windows had been hung and then complained, instead of complaining after the first window.

The more you can be there the better. (and our contractors and sub contractors actually cut us price breaks on anything we were there to actually physically help with, so, bonus!)

(Follow up: I have found it far too easy to find contractors and other professionals who will do what you ask them to. It is a lot harder to find a contractor who will do what you want them to do. These days I look for someone who will tell me if they think I am making a bad decision and who is willing to offer what they think is a better one. Those people are priceless. )

This post was edited by Fynite on Sat, Jun 1, 13 at 14:54

Thanks everyone for your replies and advice. It has been extremely helpful. Wanted to provide a little more information & clarification.

The remodel is for the basement of our home. It was was partially finished by the last owner but had no plaster walls to preserve or restore, hence the new drywall in the new laundry room. While there is supposed to be some crown molding between the cabinets & ceiling, I don't know if the suggestions on modifying the crown to disquise the slanted ceiling will help but I'll look into it. We actually did have a structural engineer visit, assess the structure, and write up a formal report for permit drawings as we had originally planned to do a whole house remodel with a large addition. Those plans got significantly scaled back due to cost and change of priorities. Engineer found no structural issues of concern.

When we first noticed the laundry room ceiling not being level and briefly talked with the contractor about it, he told us that he had known the ceiling was not going to be level as they were working on it. He said he had decided that it would be better to have a ceiling that was higher in some places and shorter than others, than a ceiling that was uniformly 1-2 inches shorter. We are very frustrated that he chose not to inform us and didn't solicit our input before making that decision. We didn't specifically state in our contract that he needed to "level the ceiling" because the old ceiling and walls were to be completely ripped out (even the insulation). We thought that it would be a given that a new room, with brand new walls and ceiling would be installed level. Are we incorrect to have thought that?

Casings: Yes, the door and window casings in the room with the wainscot are double the thickness of the casings in the rooms where the beadboard is supposed to be. They did the room with the wainscot first (and it looked great). It never occured to us that they wouldn't make the same thickness casings in the other rooms and only realized that the casings weren't the same until after they had installed some of the casings and then some of the beadboard right next to the casings. So, are we correct that the contractor should have had the casings be uniform in all the rooms and that it wasn't unreasonable for us to expect them to make the casings deeper than the beadboard?

As for being on-site and available. . . I am a stay-at-home mom and am at the house almost all the time. I go down to the basement or garage at least once a day. While I'm there I check in with the crew to see how the work is progressing and to see if they have questions or see if there is anything they want to run by me. I also let them know they can come get me upstairs or call me anytime should they need a decision about something or run into something unexpected. Sometimes they ask questions and seek input but more often than not they don't. My hubby and I try to go down to the basement almost every night or at least every couple days to see how it is coming along. We don't dislike the contractor or his crew and certainly want to avoid them having to re-do work they've already completed. So we try to be as diligent as we can to notify the contractor and crew ASAP if something doesn't seem right and we do it in a respectful way. We also have let them know that we'd much rather have them ask us if they aren't sure about something or if they encounter something that isn't covered by the plans, than to just guess our preferences. Unfortuantely we are finding over and over again that the contractor, his crew, and the subs make unilateral decisions and install things incorrectly or without consulting with us and then get upset when we let them know that what they've done wasn't done according to the architectural drawings, wasn't done as we specified in earlier written communication with the contractor, or otherwise not to our liking.

As for using a contractor well versed in old house remodels, our contractor was recommended by the local historic preservation society as well as by local architectural firms specializing in old house remodels. We spent a lot of time trying to find someone who did period appropriate work on old houses and from his portfolio and references, he seemed to be the best.

Sawdust: There have also been several instances where they were supposed to put up protection between our main home and the basement and they either didn't at all or didn't do it adequately and almost once a week we get significant dust all throughout the house (one time instead of dust, it was black soot from a furnace flue removal--took forever to clean and we are still finding it). We've had multiple conversations with the contractor about this issue to no avail. So the sawdust coating the garage just adds insult to injury. Our last contractor put up a small tent in the yard and did all their wood cutting outside and did a good job cleaning up afterwards. It never occured to me that our current contractor would have wood cutting done in our garage. Had I known they had planned on doing messy work in the garage, I would've put my foot down and told them to do it ouside or would have told them to just do it in the basement because then we wouldn't have had to clean both the house and the garage, we'd only have the house to clean!