Several times now, Lee Brothers has called my wife and asked her to submit a review for them. We have been holding off because we thought maybe things would improve. But they appear to have gotten worse. Our project started 12/1/2020.
We own a small horse and cattle ranch in Southeast Walker County Texas. My wife does large and small animal nutrition and animal rehab for a number of high-end veterinarians in the region. We found that our facility was too small to continue with the small animal segment. We needed a facility large enough and designed to complete our mission -house dogs and cats, house the veterinarians, and be an office for the ranch business (Not a public vet clinic). After an exhaustive search, we settled with Lee Brother’s Construction. Ryan Lee was our initial contact. We entered into a contract, and he estimated a 10-month completion time. Realistically, I figured a full year.
Our first ‘superintendent’ was a fella named William. Total clown. He had a question on the drawings and brought them to me. It was a completely different set of drawings from the ones we approved. They got that fixed and, I will say this, Lee Brothers dove into this project and in short order we had a dried in building standing. Then everything screeched to a stop. Something caused Lee Brothers to run off William and they hired a fella named Kayon to take over. In no time at all, things took a nose-dive.
We went from having to hunt a place to park to not having any construction people here at all. This went on for a month or so. When I inquired as to why the work had stopped Kayon blamed Covid and getting materials in. There was always some kind of scheduling conflict or excuse. We are still dealing with those conflicts, and it has been a year and a half into the job with no completion in sight.
The cabinet company installed cabinets that were not built to the design approved by my wife and the workmanship was shotty at best. To this day they still won’t come out and fix it. Lee Brothers bought their own flooring company and the epoxy flooring they installed turned yellow. Again, still have not fixed that problem. They have been through a couple of electricians. The last one Kayon brought in cut our home phone lines and did not tell anyone. This put my home phone lines out of service for over a week costing me much money to have it repaired and replaced. After reminding them numerous times (I know how slow the Permit Dept. is) they failed to submit permit paperwork for the 2 septic systems until only recently, pushing that part of the project back several more weeks. There is so much inside to do that I can’t list it all here. There is a red stain along all of the stone walls. My asphalt drive is damaged due to the 18-wheeler and concrete trucks driving up to the work site. There are supposed to be outdoor hose connections…. there is only 1 – on the opposite end of the building from where the outdoor kennels are located.
Communications with this company is completely out the window. I am fairly sure that Kayon is working on other projects because he won’t answer his phone, ignores texts, and his harder to communicate with than any person I have ever known. The receptionist refuses to allow me to speak to the owner or Kayon and does not give messages to Kayon. When I do get through to Kayon he is Mr. Excuses. At the end of the day, our project is still nowhere near being finished.
I actually like Mr. Lee but, it is like we hit the magic ‘shut off’ number in money paid (around 500K) and they moved onto something else. I am starting to think they are no better than any other fly by night contractor we have dealt with before. At this point I could not recommend them to build mud pies at a beach. Between the lies, the incompetence, billing practices, and the failures to communicate – I believe someone can find a more honorable and reliable builder in or around Walker County. Meanwhile, standing between a rock and a hard place, we are just having to wait.
Joey Schultea