Lien against House

[dmacbklyn]

I hired a general contractor to do some work on my house. The work consisted of skim coating and painting 5 rooms, putting up tiles in the bathroom, carpeting 3 rooms and staining hardwood floors in 2 rooms. The agreed upon price for this work was $9700. The contract we hand wrote says we can cancel the job at anytime should we become unhappy with his work. After working on the house for 6 days the contractor got hardly any work done. So we decided to fire him. When we tried to fire him he started to get aggressive and wanted to have a fist fight. So we called the cops and had him removed from our house. So far we have given him $3000 which we feel is more then enough to cover the work done but he feels like he as done $6000 worth of work. He has left us 2 messages demanding his $$. We have told him we feel the $3000 is enough to cover the work done and if he feels like he deserves more to take us to court. Instead of taking us to court and suing us for the $$ he is saying he is going to put a mechanical lien on our house. What can I do prevent this from happening? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks

 

[Cvillecpm]

A mechanics lien may not work in the instance you suggest depending on how much time has elasped..I suggest you sue contractor in Small Claims Court and have a judge decide based on the work he performed...get estimates from other contractors and use that as the basis for your non-payment of the remainder of the contract.