I blame myself for hiring this company without any BBB rating or reviews. I did ask for referrals and pictures of prior work which he did provide a couple of each to me. I thought I did my due diligence but obviously not enough. James Phillips is not professionally licensed nor is his company, Aboud Inc. There were several issues encountered from Day 1 of when work commenced, too many to list here. From the start, he did not manage his subcontractors very well and there were a couple of incidents that could have seriously put my family in harm?s way. The way this guy runs his business is very shady. The project started to go south when James requested another check to begin the dry wall installation in the basement and I started asking about inspection and permit process. He kept trying to talk me out of getting a permit, which was a huge red flag to me. At that point he told me if I wanted to get a permit I can do so myself and he would be willing to terminate our original contract, issue final lien waivers and give me my money back for the deposit on French drain. He then came back and said that he would get the permits but provided an addendum increasing originally quoted prices. He did not seem to know the applicable rules relating to permit process and I ended up doing research to find out what the appropriate steps myself. I found that I was required to get approval from public health before able to submit for permit application. I have tried to contact him on numerous occasions over the last couple of months to get these issues resolved but to no avail. I have several issues from the work he had performed including water damage resulting from a roof leak, incomplete roof replacement (missing shingles), shoddy roof finishing work (missing flashing), removal of and damage to the existing gutter guards which were not reinstalled after roof replacement was done, and various other items in the basement that were done which were not part of my original scope of work. In addition, no work at all was started on the French drain. As a woman, it is hard to find trustworthy contractors and this guy is definitely a not that! I plan to pursue this to the fullest as I want to be sure he does not get away with this with anyone else. This has been and continues to be a stressful situation and a life lesson that I had to learn the hard way. I wrote this review in hopes that no one else finds themselves in a similar situation with this company. Be warned!