Defur Custom Builders

What happened? ...short version.

I started building a 1,000SF barndominium in December, 2022. The plan was simple: Erect a metal shell, then finish the inside.

After getting the site cleared, slab poured and metal building erected by great contractors I hired a "jack of all trades" guy to frame it. Unfortunately, his attention to detail was horrible so I sent him packing after a few weeks.

I didn't want to waste money on an amateur again, so I decided to hire some "professionals" to do the sheetrock.

I called my concrete guy and asked him who he would have sheetrock his house. He referred me to Chris Defur of Defur Custom Builders in Mineola, Texas.

A week or so later Chris showed up with another guy, the sheetrocker, to check out the job and mentioned there were some things that needed to be fixed in the framing. That was no surprise to me because of my experience with the previous guy.

He quoted me $6,250 on 1/10/23. I was expecting around $5,000 so I asked him about it. Chris said, "It would have been about $5,200, but we need to fix some things. We'll have a couple hundred dollars just in material." He said they would need to reinforce some framing, fix the pocket door framing and do some other things to prep for sheetrock.

My first red flag was the written quote he sent.

He tacked on a $200 "Admin Fee" to the price he quoted me.

I used to be an HVAC contractor...I never gave or received a bid with an itemized admin fee. That's just the cost of doing business. His quote didn't specify any of the extras he said he needed to do, so I asked him to resend it with the list of things he was going to do...but he never did.

Chris Defur is a very nice person who was referred by a contractor I trusted. He inspected the job with an experienced sheetrocker, so I believed they knew what they needed to do to get a quality result.

My wife an I have been living in a travel trailer with three cats for two years. I was eager to get the place put together, so I just went with it.

Here we go...it's Sheetrock Time!

Chris and one of his guys showed up on 1/16/23 and reinforced our living room ceiling framing. However, as far as I know that's all he did. He said he would fix the pocket door framing, but I realized after the sheetrock was done the pocked door tracks were not level, and I'm assuming he didn't fix the half-assed framing around them. He said he would get it ready for the sheetrockers but the sheetrockers charged me again to do what I thought Chris already did.

The drywall and sheetrockers showed up on 1/17/23 ready to work. However, the wrong material was delivered. The guy got on the phone with Chris and they wasted a whole day while they got another delivery. They were a father, son and grandson team, Hayden family.

I think they probably do good work but they were in a hurry to leave for a multi-generational family cruise and they had another job to cram in before they left. Unfortunately they rushed through my job.

The Hayden drywall guys did very poor quality work.

Another family member asked me for their number, and I told here I couldn't refer her to them in good conscience.

• They used nails instead of screws...even on 5/8 ceiling drywall into soft pine framing. At some point those nails will pop and I'll have to remud, texture and paint the entire ceiling. THAT SUCKS!
• I found several quarters of sheets not nailed down so they were flopping around doors and openings.
• Some of the boards that were not fully nailed already have nails popping through the mud.
• They overcut about 25% of our outlets/switches and didn't patch them...rookie mistake.
• Covered over electrical boxes, openings (cat door) and bathroom ceiling fan.
• There are a couple spots where the spray foam wasn't shaved down flush to the studs. Instead of asking me to fix it or taking 30 seconds to shave it down they just sheetrocked over it leaving a hump in the wall.
• They drove a nail through the plug of one of my ceiling light junction box pigtails, so I had to replace it and the sheetrock is damaged there too from me trying to get the plug out from under the ceiling joist. They are lucky I didn't turn that breaker on because it could have started a fire.

On the last day for the taper (son Brent), summarized the project for me while he was cleaning up his stuff at our hose. "There was some confusion about who was paying for material. I had to pay $250 out of my pocket to get the job done and we're leaving on this cruise so we need to get this done and get paid."

I felt for the guy so I offered to advance him $250 for his out of pocket expenses and he said, "I will make sure Chris knows you already paid that."

I had also loaned him the use of my brand new air compressor and a generator I had borrowed from my neighbor. I realized later he left them covered in overspray. When I asked him about why he didn't cover or clean them, he said, "It's a messy job." and did not offer to restore them to the condition they were in before I loaned them to him. I'll need to spend at least an hour to clean up the generator before I can return it to my friend.

Chris showed up, inspected the job and pointed out a half dozen small things for him to fix before he cut the check.

Brent quickly took care of those things.

I was exhausted and stressed so I trusted Chris would quality check the workmanship on his project.

Piles of trash?

In my experience, when professionals leave a job site, they leave it clean and ready for the next trade to come in and work. However, they left piles of busted sheetrock all over. Maybe that's not customary around here, but it seems strange to leave it for the home owner to pick up and dispose of...that took a couple hours.

Then is was time to settle up...

Chris said things ran over and I need to round up to $7,000.

At this point, I didn't know what a crappy job they had done. It all looked decent to me while doing the walk through. Also, if I didn't pay, he wasn't going to pay the sheetrocker which would have disrupted their family vacation, etc.

I was frustrated because I didn't request any changes, but I didn't want to be a dick about it and screw up this family's long awaited vacation so I wrote the check on 1/25/23 and Chris and Brent left.

We can paint this for you...

Chris quoted me $2,000 to paint the place but now I was out of money so that wasn't an option.

My paint budget got swallowed up by the over-priced poor quality sheetrock job.

Uh...who stole my Dewalt tools?

Sheetrocker hired a long-term neighbor who was struggling. He was trying to help the guy by giving him an opportunity. Unfortunately, the guy repaid his generosity by stealing a bunch of my Dewalt tools. For example, when I went to fetch my drill, there was sheetrock dust all over the bag, but the drill, impact drill, and brand new oscillating tool, batteries and bits were gone...almost a thousand bucks worth of tools.

To Brent's credit, when I asked him about it, he was beside himself that someone he was trying to help was foolish enough to steal from their customer. He assured me he would get everything back to me or cover the cost.

Brent went to great lengths to recover my tools from his friend even to the point of having another friend fetch things while they were on their cruise.

However, when I explained I was still missing a 5Ah and 6Ah battery ($175 @ HomeDepot), he said the thief said he had returned everything he took...not what I would consider a reliable source. I backed off since my garage was still a construction disaster and I couldn't be 100% certain they were stolen. However, I've gotten things organized and picked through the whole place and they were in fact stolen. I informed Brent of this, but he refused to reimburse me because his thief neighbor said he returned everything.

I'm Very Disappointed...

After checking the place out more in depth and stewing on getting charged extra for crappy work I sent Chris a text:

No response. No check received.

Then late one night I was working on the lights and found the nail through my junction box pigtail.

Chris found the post I made on the Upshur County Texas Talk Facebook group. It was a stripped down version of this page. He sent a screen shot then accused me lying about the situation.

If the Haden's will pay their part and Chris pays his part, we'll be square.

No response from Chris or Brent as of 01/03/2026 but these photos on their Google Maps review have received over 1,220 views.

Now what?

I wish Chris would accept that he was the one I trusted to help me realize my dream of building a house for my wife and I. I realize the guys he hired made him look bad, but the bottom line is I hired HIM, and he hired them. It was his responsibility to get good workers.

I've known many people that play the victim card and blame others for their mistakes while trying to avoid owning their part in it.

Clearly, I should have paid closer attention to the details, but that's why I hired a professional to oversee this part of the project.

You can see from the pictures, that was not what I got.

How can Chris "make it right" now?

$750: We agreed to $6,250, then he tacked on a $200 bonus and $550 more at the end.

$200: Rebate for not fixing the two pocket doors.

$250: The advance I paid the sheetrockers.

$175: Replace the Dewalt batteries that were stolen by his crew.

$25: Replace the light damaged by his sheetrockers.

I will take this site down when Chris and the Haydens send $1,400.

I know Chris does not like this settlement offer, but I don't like looking a screwed up walls or going through the hassle and expense of repairing, retexturing and repainting my whole house. For now I'm just stuck with it.