I’m a contractor hired to do a remodel. I needed someone to do some hourly yard work and he ended up owning a painting company so I went ahead and hired him to help with finish work. He asked me if he could bring his crew and I told him no because I don’t hire subs to manage people on my jobs without knowing their work quality. He assured me that each person he had worked with before and he held them to high quality standards. I told him he could have them do general labor and only labor I assigned such as hard work and prep. The first few days were great. I went wrong by allowing them to continue the work through the weekend without supervision. The job was to be completed May 7th. May 8th I returned to the job site and they weren’t done. He had people with no painting experience painting and caulking. They botched some of the work and I asked him to fix it. He told me he did but he didn’t. I gave him specific tasks for those individuals to do but he had them do other tasks. I specifically told him that their work quality was poor and I didn’t want them working on any finish work at all without my approval. When I got there he had two women there unsupervised and they were walking around doing busy work. They were not doing the task I assigned. They were there all morning without his direction and since I do not speak Spanish I couldn’t communicate with them. I text him and told him how upset I was. He promised he would take care of everything by the end of the 8th. I came in on the 9th and the work was not done. He had not prepped any of the areas. There was paint all over the brand new floors. He caused me to have to spend my own time, unpaid, correcting his work and I completed the job 5 days late fixing it. I have pictures of his finished work. I have text messages where I disputed his work. He was paying them hourly and I expressed that I saw he had them there paying them when they weren’t working. He tried to charge me for almost 100 hours he could not account for. After a discussion with him I paid him what I thought was fair for the amount of work completed, which was about 80% of what he asked for. He had someone work on the exterior paint of the house without my authorization and the man used the wrong paint leaving areas I had to repaint. Now he is telling me he is going to put a lien on the property. It’s an investment property and just went live on the market today. I don’t want the investor or new owners to be stuck with a lien but I feel he was totally in the wrong. I feel like I have clearly stated what I needed through text. He had people riding the clock and he botched the project and left me about 75 hours of work to fix. There’s no actual contract but I know the texts can act as so. He misrepresented himself and the people he hired to me. I feel this is fraudulent. He also explicitly went against my wishes, that I stated in my text. I think the amount he wants is around $1500. I’ve asked him for time sheets and a list of what each person worked on with an accountability of hours and their qualifications and he proceeds to threaten me. I advised him if he decided to pursue legal action I intended to file a counter claim for the work I had to repair. I’m hourly and I did not charge my customer for the work I did to fix the disaster he left me. I’m sure I will need to talk to a local attorney but I’m hoping to get some answers here to help ease my mind through the weekend. Thanks in advance for the advice.