Brett Peterson- Contractor/Handyman- He's the one to hire if you want to be lied to and have your money stolen- located in Waupaca Wisconsin

In May of 2013 I contacted Brett Peterson to get an estimate on building a shed on our property. At first he was very polite and easy to work with, we were impressed that he came to our house several times to view the building site and had other people to suggest to do some of the other work needed. On May 4th he wrote us up a contract but I noticed a lot of mistakes and made some changes so he wrote us another and we signed it on 5/11/13. Before I signed it I asked him to add a start and end date on the contract and he said he wouldn't, that should have been my first warning and looking back I should not have signed the contract, but unfortunately I did. After the excavation work was done by a subcontractor the cement was poured and Brett was ready to start his building, this was around the end of September. My husband and I had been very clear to Brett that we wanted this project done in summer while it was warm out because we had additional things we needed to do inside the shed when it was built so we expected a full crew of guys to be here and that was totally not the case! When they began building Brett had two son in laws helping, one was from out of state and would only be there and the other turned out to be his only full-time employee, this was not disclosed to us when we were discussing hiring Brett or we never would have for such a big project. Problems began instantly, his son in laws wouldn't show up, the full-time one would come for a few hours and leave and called in sick one or twice a week. 

My husband and I had designed a sketch of the building using a computer program for Brett, it was drawn to scale so that he would know where the door and windows were to be placed, the length of the building, etc. and Brett and I had also verbally discussed things while he took notes. I did not have a blue print drawn up, I didn't know he needed one and he didn't ask for one until he started making constant mistakes, then he blamed me for not having a blue print.

Problems began almost immediately, he put doors in the wrong spots and when I pointed it out he stated that I was making changes and he would charge me extra to fix the problems, again another red flag that said I should have gotten rid of him! 

Next I noticed he had ordered door knobs w/out telling me, I wanted levers so he told me to buy what I wanted and he would return the knobs (that I paid him for) and then credit it back to my final bill, he did return them but I never saw the money again, the same thing happened with a door, he returned it ( I had paid for it) and I never saw the money again.

Long story short, I had to find someone else to do the roof, I got tired of his excuses about someone he was supposedly going to hire and my guy realized that Brett built the lean to roof of the shed at the wrong angle and it resulted in the steel being too short for the roof of the main building and too long for the lean to roof. When we told Brett the problem he suggested that we cut off the excess steel from the parts that were too long and piece them onto the roof where the pieces were too short- he literally wanted me to piece together a brand new roof of a building. I refused and had him fix the angle of the lean to, this then resulted in the steel for the wall beneath the lean to area to be too short, again causing another delay and we had to re-order new steel. I paid my roofer out of my pocket, Brett said that there was $2,800 allowed in the bid for a roofer and that he would credit it back to me at the end, again I never saw the money.

Another day Brett called me to tell me the soffit for the lean to roof was too short, I'm thinking this happened because of him having to rebuild it correctly to fit the steel on the roof, so Brett suggested, instead of ordering new soffit that we would just put it in the opposite direction of the rest of the building and it would work- again a contractor trying to rig things together on a new building to cover up his bad mistakes.

Another issue began when Brett called to tell me that the steel for the interior walls was 2" too short, he told me the store had sent the wrong size. After I did some homework I found out that Brett had actually built 10' walls to be 10' 2" and that was the reason the steel didn't fit. Instead of correcting the problem he wanted to put a board up on the wall to cover the mistake, I refused, again stating I wasn't going to patch together a new building and it ended up with us getting a steel trim piece to cover the gap.

During this whole process his attendance was absolutely terrible! He would show up at 8, 9, 10 am and leave by 2, 3, or 4 pm. In August he took 12 days off because he said it was too hot, he never put in time on the weekends to make up for lost time, and would take entire days off for doctor's appointments. It was obvious that he had other jobs he was working on and would travel back and forth to them putting a few hours in on each one. I often had to hear that it was too hot out, he had allergies, or that being 52 he didn't put in long hours anymore. 

Everything fell apart on October 10th. My HVAC guy called with a question and I asked him if Brett or anyone was working on the shed, he said no, they had all left around 11:30am for a new job. This obviously really upset me because it was mid October, my project was nowhere near being done and after all the mistakes and delays Brett thought it would be okay to leave my place to start another job. This really showed me that he didn't see my place as a priority and I felt that he had been very misleading when we hired him and told him we wanted things done by summertime. I called Brett and asked him why he wasn't at our place and he said he had started another job, when I asked how he thought that was okay he stated that he had made a commitment to these people and had to get started, this again got me really upset and I stated that I thought he was unprofessional and could not believe that after all the problems at my place he would have the audacity to push it aside for someone else. We got into an argument, Brett had a constant bad and disrespectful attitude towards me and told me he would take his stuff and leave and I said fine, that I would be suing him. Our conversation ended with him telling me he'd talk to me the next day at my house. When I got home from the work the next day the shed was empty of his tools and my neighbor stated that a car came over around 8 that morning and was there for about 20 minutes and left, he had walked off the job. 

After I realized that he left I called Menards, we had been ordering all the product from there and a lot of it wasn't here yet so I wanted to see what was on order and how to get it all delivered. Brett's contract required a large down payment and then 5 installments, each to pay for labor and supplies and he had told me that he ordered what we needed from Menards but had them put it on hold until he wanted it delivered so that it wouldn't all be in his way.

When I called Menards on the 10th of October they had told me that Brett had ordered the product needed for the shed in June and on 9/9 Brett had canceled an order for $3,166 dollars worth of product and that he also called again on 10/10 and canceled another order for $831.00 worth of product, all of which I had already paid for when I gave him my downpayment and installments. So he had cancelled the orders and kept my money! I was quite surprised to hear that he had started doing it in early September, it seemed quite clear now that he had been planning on ripping me off quite early in this process. I had also given Brett another intallment payment in the amount of $7,118.60 on October 3rd to cover material and labor but he walked off the job on the 10th, hardly putting in any time, he didn't work that weekend and left my job the following Thursday and had canceled on product so he took that money and ran with it as well. 

Now I sit here with an unfinished building, no product to finish it with even though I had given him all the money for it, and am out a ton of cash on the project. I wil have to reorder the final products I need to finish the shed and also pay another contractor to finish his work and fix all of Brett's mistakes. I have already had a few people here to give me estimates and they have pointed out multiple mistakes and cannot belive this man has a contractor's license. 

I wanted the public to be aware of what he has done so that they can hopefully learn from my mistakes and make a better choice when finding a contractor.