ESTERO, FLA — Christine Wiles says she was hoping to have Thanksgiving dinner on her fully renovated lanai, but she says the renovation work didn't start until that month.
"November some time is when they came and poured the slab," she said, "And then it was another few weeks until they came and painted and of course the first coat of paint has washed away."
She says she's now left with an unfinished job and she's not happy about it.
She claims that she's tried reaching out to the company to see what the hold up is, in getting the job done.
"Pretty much since then, it's been hard to reach somebody," she said.
FOX 4 called the company behind the job, Fabri-Tech Screen Enclosures for answers. We were able to get a hold of the owner, Danny Mitchell.
"Are we behind? We are 100 percent behind and we're doing the best we can to keep up," he said.
Mitchell tells us it did take them a while to get the permits pulled and to start work, but he says the job was truly slowed down because of the pandemic.
"We have employees that aren't coming into work, employees that are off sick, employees that are afraid to come to work for the fear of getting sick and we're just doing the absolute best we can," he said, "It seems like one minute you can do it and then you lose three or four or five employees and you just can't quite keep up with the flow."
Mitchell says they're willing to finish the rest of the work, which would include a paint job and screen work, but claims wiles hasn't paid them for the most recent paint job they did.
Wiles says she's not paying them another cent, until they finish up work, because she says the last paint job was quickly ruined by heavy rain.
"If they're not going to do the job, I just want them to tell me. I've already paid them $3500 which pretty much covers what they've already done," she said.
And she says as far as the pandemic's impact on the work is concerned, she says she would have been more understanding if the company had kept her in the loop.
"Bad news is better than no news at all," she said.
