Hiring a Contractor
Your contractor stopped showing up. Here is what to do.
Half-finished, money already paid, and the phone stopped being answered. The order you do things in from here matters more than you would expect.
Move in this order: document the current state of the work, stop any further payments, put the request to return in writing, and check the licence status before you do anything else. Then get a replacement builder to assess what is actually there. Do not demolish, repair or let anyone “tidy up” before it is photographed — the physical state of the job is your evidence, and it is the one thing you cannot recreate later.
First, before anything else
Photograph everything, today
Every room, every open wall, every unfinished connection, and the site as a whole. Date-stamped. This is the single most valuable thing you can do in the first hour, and it is the thing people skip because it feels unproductive.
Stop further payments
Do not make another draw against work that has not been done, no matter what reason is given. Money already paid is hard to recover; money not yet paid is leverage.
Put it in writing
A text or email asking when they are returning to work. Keep it factual and unemotional. You are creating a record, not winning an argument.
Check the licence
Look up their licence on the CSLB registry. Suspended, expired or a lapsed bond changes your situation and is worth knowing before you decide anything.
Gather the paperwork
Contract, every change order, every invoice, every payment record, and the permit number if one was pulled. A replacement builder will need all of it.
The instinct to clean up before a new contractor sees it is completely understandable and it works against you twice. It destroys the record of what was actually left, and it hides the exact conditions the next builder needs to price accurately.
What the CSLB and the bond can and cannot do
California licensed contractors carry a bond, and the Contractors State License Board handles complaints against licensees. Both are real and both are worth using. Neither is a fast route to getting your house finished.
A bond is a fixed amount, not a guarantee that your project gets completed, and it is shared across all claims against that contractor. The complaint process runs on its own timeline. Treat both as worth pursuing in parallel — not as the plan for getting the work done.
We can tell you what it will cost to finish the work. What we cannot do is advise you on your contract, your remedies, or a lien. If real money is involved, a construction attorney is worth the consultation, and we will say so rather than pretend otherwise.
What a replacement builder needs from you
Taking over an abandoned job is genuinely harder than starting fresh, and any builder who tells you otherwise has not done it. We inherit someone else's decisions, someone else's workmanship, and a permit history we did not create.
- The original contract and every change order, so we can see what was actually promised
- Payment records, so everyone can see what was paid against what was built
- The permit number and inspection history — this tells us what has been signed off and what has not
- Any plans, engineering or Title 24 documentation that exists
- Unrestricted access to open up what needs opening up before we price anything
Why the price to finish is rarely “the rest of the original price”
This is the expectation that causes the most friction, so it is worth stating plainly. If you paid 60% and the job is 40% done, finishing it usually costs more than the remaining 40% of the original contract.
| Reason | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Unknown workmanship | We have to verify what is behind the finishes rather than trusting it. That is inspection time nobody billed for originally |
| Rework | Anything not built to code has to be corrected before we build on top of it, and we will not build on top of it |
| Permit and inspection history | Uninspected concealed work may have to be exposed again for sign-off |
| Materials on site | Sometimes usable, sometimes not, sometimes gone. It gets counted rather than assumed |
| Warranty boundaries | We warrant our work. We cannot warrant someone else's, and the line has to be drawn explicitly in writing |
None of that is padding. It is the honest cost of picking up a job whose history nobody can vouch for, and a builder who quotes you the cheerful number now will find it later as a change order.
How to avoid it next time
Two habits prevent most of this. Never pay ahead of the work — California caps the deposit on a home improvement contract at $1,000, and a contractor asking for 30% or half up front is telling you something. And put every change in writing, because a job that drifts verbally is a job where nobody can later agree what was owed.
Common questions
Can I just hire someone else and finish it?
What happens to the permit if my contractor disappears?
Will you finish another contractor's work?
How much of my deposit can I get back?
Should I file a CSLB complaint?
Where to go next
Written by the team at Elusive Construction, a licensed California general contractor (B #1112902) building in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. General information about how residential construction works — not legal advice. For your specific contract, talk to an attorney.
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