Reviews of Stone and Pine (Architect)

Maureen Mulcair

In February 2018 we chose Stone and Pine out of Kingston, Ontario to be our general contractors. We agreed to pay a higher than industry standard for their General Contracting services (22%) as we were under the impression that they were a reputable firm and specialized in stone homes (which ours is). Issues started immediately with their billings. They tried to charge us for administrative duties for their company (i.e. charging us for creating the invoice to bill us). They had invited us to come and see work they had done on another home and then charged us for their time to do so. Every one of their invoices had to be reconciled completely. We are talking about errors that in one case was several thousands of dollars. They started demolition of an extension on our home that was not to code in March of 2018. To our utter surprise we received the following in an e-mail on April 24th from the township “we have no other alternatives but to stop the illegal work/demolition/construction being carried at #### Lakeshore as it clearly contravenes the Ontario Building Code and the Ontario Building Code Act”. They were carrying out the renovation without first securing the required permits. They even tried to blame us for this situation as we had expressed that we wanted to be able to spend Father’s Day in the house, we cannot understand their logic. As part of our GC agreement they were responsible for securing the permits as part of their fee (this is normal industry practice). They tried to charge us extra money for securing our permits. When we questioned this, they told us that there was more work than usual in issuing the permits, so they “hoped we would understand”. Of course, we refused. One of the requirements for the issuance of the conservation permit was the installation of a new septic system. Stone and Pine issued us a change order for this work, and stated their fee would be only 20%. We felt this was a good will gesture on their part as the cost of the septic was going to be approximately $ 40,000 and they were doing very little work on this as the local septic company was taking charge of this part of the project. Once the septic was installed my husband and I took charge of the work to secure the permits (talking to the conservation authorities, meeting the mayor etc.). The permits were issued on August 10th. It took 3.5 months to secure the permits. On September 10th stating that they were sorry for the delay in getting back to us we received the following from Stone and Pine; we have the right to withdraw from the project due to extreme time delays such as this (section five)”. A delay that was completely their fault. When we started the final reconciliation of their invoicing, we noticed that they had charged us 22% for their fee on the Septic Tank. We told them we would only be giving them 20% as our contract clearly states that a change order supersedes the base contract and the change order stated 20%. They refused to give us our money back or honour the change order they had created. At this point we decided that if they needed our money that badly they could have it. We wanted nothing further to do with them. We sent them a note asking for all the plans (architectural, engineering, surveys etc.) along with a few other items that we had paid for. Despite repeated requests they did not answer us for over 3 weeks. We finally had to engage our lawyer to get what was rightfully ours. They left the house uninhabitable, and dangerous (they left the gas furnace venting into the house directly which could have killed someone).