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The contractor engaged in other squirming that suggests it was in over its financial head.
Before construction work ever began, Sun submitted the first of what would be 11 change orders, requesting that different cabinets, paint, and smoke detectors be substituted for those originally called for. To this day, there is great confusion among the HCDC, Sun, and the Lewises about which change orders were actually approved.
Sun attempted to refuse to pay for the permits required for construction -- even though the construction contract unquestionably stated that the permits were the contractor's responsibility.
Work came to a halt less than two weeks after it started, when Sun's workmen tore off the back of the house -- where they were to build a new kitchen -- without a building permit. The workmen removed and threw away a water heater that renovation plans said was merely to be disconnected and then reinstalled.
Then they asked Lewis to pay for a new one.
After a flurry of meetings among the staff of the HCDC and the Mayor's Office of Housing, Sun employees, and Lewis family members, work eventually continued -- with a permit and a water heater, purchased by Sun.
Soon, however, relations between Sun and the Lewis family again broke down. The original agreement called for all upstairs work to be completed first, so that Lewis could move back into her house before work on the downstairs unit and the exterior began. Instead, Lewis' home -- upstairs and downstairs, inside and outside -- was completely torn up, as the project fell further and further behind schedule.
Twice she went to stay with family members while the house was under construction; her absence didn't seem to speed the project a bit.
While she was gone, her belongings were moved to the basement, which flooded after a water pipe burst.
At this point, any hope of communication or agreement seemed to have ended. Lewis repeatedly pleaded that workers not smoke in her house. They ignored her. Work stopped. Sun thought Lewis fired his firm. Lewis thought Sun quit. Another flurry of meetings was held with another handful of bureaucrats.
After three more weeks, construction started up again.
And, again, went very badly.
The Lewis project was not the first time the HCDC had worked with Sun Construction. More than a year before Daniel Sun signed onto Lewis' home rehabilitation job, he contracted to renovate the home of Edith Dyson.
Dyson also is a widow who sought a government loan and the help of the HCDC to fix her home.
"I went through them, thinking it was a safe way to go, because there would be someone to oversee the work. My husband is dead. My children do not live with me," Dyson says. "I thought if I were to go through one of the Mayor's Office of Housing agencies, things would be all right."
Things were not all right.
Dyson's $14,000 remodeling project was considerably smaller than that of Lewis' home. Essentially, the job included the replacement of plumbing, reinsulation of the house, and the installation of a closet and some backyard steps.
Dyson says she was encouraged to hire Sun Construction, the lowest bidder for the project. She was, she says, provided no references for the firm. The contract was signed Jan. 19, 1993.
By June 1994, Dyson had asked that Sun not come back to work on her home. But because of a pay dispute, Sun didn't leave until October 1994. Dyson says the walls in her immaculate home were torn open -- and left open, with in-sulation hanging into the hallway -- for months. The construction work that was supposed to take 60 days took nearly a year. The price went up through change orders; one of them added $2,000 to the contract for that most unforeseeable of costs -- blueprints.
Dyson says she and Sun and the HCDC were in a constant battle.
"To this day, I do not know the amount of money left after the work or the change orders," Dyson says. "I just got tired and decided what will be will be, because I was getting physically ill.
"I'm finishing the rest of the house a little at a time, as I can afford to do so."
No one told Ora Lewis about Edith Dyson. Neither the Mayor's Office of Housing nor the HCDC included Dyson's name on the list of references given to Lewis when she decided to hire Sun Construction Co. to work on her home.
Sun Construction did not just tear off the back of Ora Lewis' house without a building permit, throw away her water heater, and drown her belongings in a basement. No, the Lewis house was to become a full-scale, never-ending, public- and private-sector construction disaster.
Before they were finished with the Lewis home, Sun's workers had pulled up and relaid vinyl flooring in the kitchen three times. The floor still doesn't conform to the job specifications. Among other things, the flooring, meant to be white, has begun to turn orange, and it is tearing at the edges where the room meets the hallway.
The cabinets in the kitchen appear to be hung crookedly; one side of the cabinets has separated from its frame.
Government records indicate that city inspectors still haven't reviewed all of the electrical work done in the house.
Although Sun finished wood floors in the bedrooms and living room of the home, the firm left the wooden flooring in the hallway that runs through the middle of the house unfinished. Sun claimed that refinishing the hall was not part of the contract, which covered only the refinishing of floors in the building's "entire living area."
But the contract calls for the refinishing of 600 square feet more flooring than Sun dealt with. And the hallway connects the living spaces of the home.
