GoFundMe:

For those of you that know our story, you know our current situation we are in, and the ongoing battles we have been facing for over the last year. Well, those battles have come to an end, and a whole new set of them is currently hitting us right now. For those of you who don’t know, here’s a bio on our entire situation:

Being newly married and first-time home buyers, we had only owned our house for less than a year. In January 2024, my husband and I had a small flood in our basement. We took the next step of action and had multiple different companies out to tell us what the problem was and what it would take to fix. All three companies told us our interior drain tiles had failed and they needed to be replaced. We reviewed all three plans carefully and chose a specific one that checked every box we were looking for. We ended up awarding a company named Foundation Solutions 360 (now known as U.S. Waterproofing) the job.

Fast forward to March of 2024. The first day of construction came. We thought we were in great hands. They came into our home, did their normal work of busting up the concrete to expose the ground beneath our basement. Until they hit a void underneath the foundation of our home. Instead of stopping work immediately and informing us of the void below our home, they continued their work start to finish and never once made a comment or brought it to any of our attention until we questioned them during the final walk-through of why our basement slab had settled and cracked almost 3 inches in some areas. (Our proof is the paint line on our basement walls.) They also took all new electrical lines we had installed and ripped them out of the concrete walls and left live wires hanging from our ceiling. (The breaker was never shut off.) Going back to the final walk-through, we questioned the foreman on the job why our basement slab cracked and settled, and he looked at me and said there was a void. Due to the lack of negligence in informing us of the void under the foundation of our home, immediately our basement slab cracked and settled, our basement door quit closing properly, we noticed our staircases going upstairs and downstairs all had new significant cracks and signs of settling immediately. We did a walk around the house and found significant cracks in the brick around our house as well. Jon immediately reached back out to the contractor who sold us the job and said I’m not happy and you need to come back out and see this. He came back out immediately and took one look around and goes, “What the fuck happened down here?” My only response to him was, “I’m asking you the same question.”

He took some photos and went back to the head contractor of their company and said they’d be in touch. We received a phone call about having the work corrected and they sent a new guy to our home and the repairs they performed were laying a concrete filler down on the floor and called it a day. Jon went back and questioned again about making it right and we were sent a picture text of a paper copy of their contract and the response said, “We’re not liable,” and that was the last of the communication we had.

we called one of the other companies we were possibly interested in using back out to our home and said, “What is this going to take to fix?” His immediate response after looking at the house was, “I cannot give you a quote, you now have structural damage and you need a structural engineer report to fix before I can give you any quote of repairs.”

From that point, we hired an attorney, a structural engineer, and many other contractors to get us quotes to properly fix our house. At the time, it was $63k worth of damage. But we couldn’t get approved for the cost of fixes from five different companies. As the duration of time went on in our case, our home continued to settle and we experienced more damages. All of our kitchen tiles have cracked. Our chimney is falling away from the house. We discovered a second door that quit closing properly and more signs of movement in our crown and base moldings. Our front porch has pulled away. Our back patio is cracked and settling. Our sunroom has several cracks in the floor and wall. Throughout the process of having everyone on site, our total to fix the house broke $100k and only went up from there.

For the last year, we have been gathering evidence and building a case against this company. Jon has taken an ungodly amount of time off of work to take care of everything that has been needed for every aspect of this case. We have been very blessed with the time he was gifted to take and do what we needed to do.

Fast forward to March of 2025: our court date finally arrives and we go and present our case to our arbitrator. We gave every bit of evidence and had all of our witnesses in line and hit hard against them.

We have found a new company (Foundation Systems of Michigan) that we are going to be using to fix our foundation amongst filling the void, new waterproofing system, and much more. They have been absolutely wonderful with everything and know our story and are going to be doing everything they can in their power to make sure we are taken care of and never have anything like this happen to us again.

We just as of this week received the final decision from the arbitrator. In his words in his final statement, he believes everything that we had presented to the case. Our testimonies, our witnesses, everything. He pulled the plug on us last second and let this company walk pretty much free and clean with an award to us of $8,600 of which after we pay off the remaining balance of the original job we walk away with $3k. But truly after all the missed work and lawyer fees, we’re in the hole more than where we started.

Here we are now with a home that was perfectly fine before, passed a home inspection and all. Now has over $100k worth of damage caused by the work of this company, plus the negligence of not informing us of the void. And our bills have racked up to where we cannot sell the house now and have pretty much no other option than to reach out publicly and ask for help.

We would appreciate any help you’re willing to offer. And of course, we are happy to explain more information on what we’ve been going through this past year.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story!

Update 5/15/25:

The new contractors fixing the house uncovered a new issues which requires an additional $5,500 of work.

Update 6/4/25:

The lawsuit/ final decision has been over since May 7th, but yet we still haven’t received any settlement from the company.

Update 6/5/25:

Our furnace is bad, and needs to be replaced. Our burner is popping, and there’s a hole in the heat exchanger and of which required a new furnace. Currently getting tested for carbon monoxide leaks.