Of course you have to pay for flooring installation one way or the other. Directly or indirectly, you pay for everything. The question has to be: was that installation included in the original bid? So, what does the contract say about it?

It sounds like both of you are disorganized and lack an attention to detail His omissions could have been deliberate, but you should have been more diligent in oversight. You should of had every item listed on the contract before you signed it. At this point, you are going to have a discussion over every item not mentioned and specified.
This naivete' might be a costly lesson.
Ron

I agree with Ron.

I am sorry for your stressful experience. There are a lot of similarities to mine. It is has been very stressful to me to have big holes cut in finished and even painted drywall to fix electrical work that should have been done before the walls were closed up. I disagree with the above posters that you should have known what details were needed in a contract, or should have caught the contractor's mistakes. The contractor is supposed to be the experienced expert who knows what should be in a good contract and the order to do the work in. They should be there at least daily supervising and aware of what is being done. If our general contractor had checked up on his subs more often he could have caught mistakes as they were being made instead of several steps later. Even reading up on the whole topic before hand, there are SO many things I would do differently if I ever did it again. Which I think I won't. I do agree with the poster that you should sit down and go over remaining details/questions and come to an agreement as to what needs to be done and who pays and in writing. So you will at least be at as close an understanding as possible. Email is also a useful papertrail of what is being agreed on. Good luck to a beautiful and finished project as soon as possible.

Thankfully I still owe over 1/3 of the cost. If I was the one owed that much money I would hustle to get the job done in a week, which it could be done in. And if anyone is thinking my delays were due to change orders, that is just not the case. The only change was adding 2 skylights at the framing stage which are long finished. And I did check several references, confirmed valid license, and no prior complaints.

Sign me "6 months into a supposed to be 3 month project, and no one has showed up or called for a week"

or "every day we are half way closer to being done"

I hope you didn't give the contractor ALL the money up front.........Your one big leverage is... the money.

Do not pay him one more red cent until he is done and you like it.

If you don't like it when he's done then you can figure out what it's going to cost to fix it and work it from there.

I don't like to do EVERYTHING at once. I like to get one item done then move on to the next.
Oh well good luck.

Scott

Just out of curiosity, did you have plans drawn up before you selected the contractor? If you don't have a good plan of what the end product is supposed to look like, it is nearly always impossible to chart a path to get there.