our experience with diamondbuilt llc and Con Man kurt dys

What you're in for with a build from DiamondBuilt Builder LLC    

Kurt Dys is the owner of DiamondBuilt LLC, aka dbtrim.com, DiamondBuilt-Builder, and DiamondBuilt-Inc.    

DiamondBuilt never finished our home, 16 months into the build and there wasn’t even a glimpse of a move-in date. Our contractual completion date was roughly 09-10-2021 (300-day build) as written in the contract, we were 456 days as of 02-09-2022.    

***UPDATE*** 10-2-2024 - For those of you that have been following our experience with this disaster of a builder OR were told that we were "crazy" (as Kurt told a few folks) OR didn't believe that my review was accurate or truthful because it was too detailed, please note that as of 10-2-2024, Pasco County Court determined that after three days of trial, Diamond Built LLC was found guilty of Breach of Contract. Both of his counter suits against us were dismissed and we were awarded damages equal to the amount of money we spent to finish our home. A link to the judgement will be provided when available. 

*** Updates as of 1-16-2023 ***

I just wanted to share with everyone that the case is in progress. 

https://unicourt.com/case/fl-pas-chisholm-christopher-et-al-vs-diamond-built-llc-583884

*** Updates as of 4-28-2022 ***

So after quite a bit of hassle with Kurt, we were able to get the county to take both the Pool and House permits from DiamondBuilt LLC and give them to us. We have passed all finals and have the CO for our home. Kurt's attempt at keeping the permits has failed. He sent a letter to the county asking to be removed from the permits, however, in Pasco county, that cannot happen so he was offered the option of transferring them to us. He declined to do that, causing us a 2 week delay in receiving the CO. The central permitting office made mention to me that it was more than apparent his only goal was to keep us out of our home and they were gracious enough to make that permit change for us. YAY PASCO COUNTY!!!

Updates on the pool - Found out this week that Kurt, once again, showed his incompetence in this industry. He never had the Static Water inspection, nor the Piping Pressure inspection completed. Today (4-28-2022) we had the inspectors out to perform those, only to find out that the previous (unlicensed) pool company completely botched the plumbing. Installing only ONE main drain in each the Spa and the Pool. Code requires 2 drains in each. Had Kurt called in inspections as he was supposed to, this would have been caught. So, fast forward back to today, inspections failed because of this and we will have to have both the pool and the spa shell cut and additional plumbing installed to add 2 additional drains. 

Sure would have thought that someone who claims to have built all the homes and pools that he claims to have built (which we know based on publicly available information is a complete lie) would have known when to call in what inspections. By the way, this is the 4th inspection we have found that he completely missed during the build. 

*** Updates as of 4-9-2024 ***

My amazing wife is the best Project Manager EVER. She has interviewed countless subcontractors and hired only the best to finish our home. She has had 3-5 trades here every day (even Sundays) and managed to get our home completed and ready to move in, in 7 weeks, having passed all final inspections including the final building inspection. WAY TO GO BABY!!

*** Updates for 3-23-2022 ***

So, as we have made great progress in finishing our home, with more than 1 trade onsite at a time, we are now down to final inspections and CO. However, it turns out that the 5% up front (which we paid directly to him on 9-23-2020) that Kurt said was for "Permit and Impact Fees", was never used for Impact Fees. The county just told me they have not been paid. Oddly, I have a canceled check to Kurt AND an invoice showing that the allowance set aside for the fees had been paid. My opinion now is that this guy was a CON MAN from the start. SO, just add $17,000.00 to the wad of money that Kurt Dys has taken and not used for the purposes intended. 

*** Effective 02-10-2022, Kurt and DiamondBuilt have been FIRED for Breach of Contract and litigation is in progress!! ***    

Note: I have documentation to support every claim in this review and am happy to provide a copy to anyone who wants to see it. With that being said, consider yourself warned about this lousy excuse of a home builder and Human Being. 

Note his positive reviews are from Realtors/Contractors/Clients from when he worked at "real builders" not when Diamond Built existed and are very old. Talk to people he has ACTUALLY built for in the last 4 years. None of them have posted a review about him.     

Kurt Dys is a Thief, Liar and a Scammer while claiming to be a Christian. He has not been building homes as a Builder for over 20 years as he claims - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurt-dys-20bb4a48 - His public Linked-in profile shows his progression in the industry, a Superintendent until 2017. DiamondBuilt Inc seems to have failed, DiamondBuilt LLC active since 2017 (as a business, not including any DBA he may have done) and DiamondBuilt Trim is new as of June 2021.     

So far, I have solid proof that he has taken over $67,000.00 from our bank draws and not used it for its intended purposes. Regardless, according to some subcontractors, he has not used that money to pay the various subcontractors that have completed work on our home. We have been told by some subcontractors, Kurt has literally instructed them to put liens on our home because he is “not paying” them. AND, he has taken complete draws for various items while not completing the work.  One of these subcontractors told me that they are pursing legal action against Kurt Dys / DiamondBuilt LLC because of the proof I have showing that Kurt indeed took the draw money and to date, still has not paid them for their work, from August 2021. That subcontractor told me that they didn't feel it was right to lien our property when the fault does not belong to us (Thank God there are still people in the World that do the right thing). I am warning others because I don’t want this nightmare to happen to anyone else.  I should have done a better job at vetting DiamondBuilt LLC. He says he has been building homes for over 20 years, when in reality, while he has been a GC, DiamondBuilt LLC has only been in business since 2017. https://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail?inquirytype=EntityName&directionType=Initial&searchNameOrder=DIAMONDBUILT%20L170001980250&aggregateId=flal-l17000198025-f02b0a8e-dd50-4847-8f53-a70d95f6b512&searchTerm=diamond%20buillt&listNameOrder=DIAMONDBUILT%20L170001980250    

DiamondBuilt routinely takes credit for things in which they do not do, from complete home builds to interior/exterior projects that homeowners do on their own. Our custom closets, detached garage and custom built-in cabinetry in great room were all completed by outside companies hired by US, outside of the contract with DiamondBuilt, yet they claim on their Social Media that "THEY" were responsible all of those.    

Prior to actually signing the contract, Kurt was responsive, courteous, and seemed very willing to assist. I mentioned early on that I was going to be “high maintenance” and ask a lot of questions as this was my first custom build, our final-forever home and the single largest purchase of our lifetime to which Kurt was understanding and seemed appreciative that I would be “part of the build”.    

With that being said, the journey has been the most miserable, exhausting, and stressful experience of our lifetime. Sadly, most of the stress could have (and should have) been avoided had Kurt been fully involved in the build, had a desire to communicate and wasn’t trying to nickel and dime us to death (actually Hundreds and Thousands us to death). You will feel like you’re fighting for your own money while he tries to convince you that you work for him, and he owes you no answers or explanations. Kurt Dys will hide from you, the actual costs of services, which can only be interpreted as a way for Kurt to manipulate change orders (to which he tacks on an additional 18%). Kurt has absolutely no attention to detail, ZERO ability to multi-task, NO communication skills, no ability to schedule anything timely and has no basic project management knowledge. He is a complete JOKE!   

 1. We were told that our build would be 8 months (complete in July 2021) and contractually was 300 days (September 10th-ish 2021). We broke ground November 16th, 2020. I understand Covid disrupted the supply chain, however, while being delayed an additional  8 weeks for windows and garage doors, and waiting for cabinets for over 9 months as of 1-18-2022 (after Kurt initiated delay of 3 months because he fired the original cabinet guy, because they showed us line item pricing where we noted we were being double charged for the laundry room and butler's pantry cabinets and Kurt Dys didn’t like that we found out), no other work was done on the house where it could/should have been. Kurt Dys seems to have no Project Management experience and believes that everything must be sequential, no tasks can run in parallel.    

2. Be very mindful that there is a poorly written line item for allowances, and while it says, “Allowances are calculated at cost plus 10%”. the allowances listed in the contract are only accurate if you don’t need any additional items completed, like site work, landscaping or anything listed in Allowances. Apparently, what that means is that if you require any additional items, Kurt has to take an additional cut of any upgrades you want (or require upgrades because Custom, Luxury home builds means something much different to most people than it does to Kurt). It now makes sense why Kurt keeps his allowances so low, it is so he can get a cut on the many upgrades/changes you will decide upon because his standard allowances are minimal and very basic. $1000 allowance for light fixtures in a custom, luxury home? We went over that in just exterior coach lights, so we took the credit and bought our fixtures ourselves.    

3. A note to the females of the couple (or single females) that may be doing business with DiamondBuilt, Kurt Dys pays no attention to you and will only listen to the Male in the couple. My Wife had asked for very specific items to be included in the build (before we went to the bank with the final cost-to-build) and every one of them was ignored and not included. He was extremely dismissive with her.   

4. We were never consulted on multiple aspects of the build. For instance, we were never asked about the function of our windows. Our Laundry room window, garage windows and Master Bathroom windows don’t open, and we would have absolutely chosen to have all of them installed with the ability to open especially for safety purposes. When you’re given a set of plans, the builder should review them with you extensively.  The average homeowner wouldn’t know that windows with an FG symbol next to them on the plans means fixed glass (doesn’t open).  Kurt left a safety hazard on the back patio when exiting the master bedroom, there is a 1 inch lift in the pavers, so if you're not paying attention, you will trip and hurt yourself.  

5. Don’t even think about asking Kurt Dys any questions, he will respond with anger and gaslight you until you start to think you’re out of line for asking anything, making you feel as though it is his money, and you work for him, on his timeline. Literally on the phone with the cabinet installers listening to them explain to me that they haven't been able to reach the builder to address electrical trim boxes. I typed an email to Kurt while on the phone with the installers at 7:53am saying that he had to call these guys immediately (you know, because I am not my own superintendent, or am I?) and received this as his response, which was obviously a lie - "Chris I’ve been on the phone with Kurt Raschke since 645 so you can stop the BS".      

6. We WERE our own Superintendent. After he fired the Superintendent (or the Superintendent quit, not sure) from our job in May 2021, we were lucky if he visited our build site more than once or twice a week for 15 minutes at a time (our property surveillance cameras indicate this). Besides barely any communication from Kurt Dys, about anything, he appears to have no more than 1 sub per trade. We have had to coordinate our own subs for some of the work. We have had to point out errors in workmanship (some of which were never even resolved. Crooked boards in ceiling beams, drywall covered can lights and missing stucco, just as examples).    

7. Garbage inside house – Kurt didn’t want to pay for the dumpster for another drop, so he has been using our garage as a trash can. It even has subcontractor leftover lunch rotting. We had to resolve this and had the garage cleaned out.    

8. Communication goes out the window once the contract is signed, you will have phone calls go unanswered as well as weeks without email responses, if ever. I still have emails unanswered from May 2021. I was asked what I wanted in the Master Bath window, wood, or marble. I answered his email stating that I wanted it to match the shower windows and it should be marble. Well, it is wood. Master shower tile never finished (he took the money though) and we are having to pay another company to follow up and resolve all the unfinished tile work. We are having to get all the tile in the master bathroom regrouted because it was too thin.  One piece of tile is completely missing as is the caulk around the shower, and he didn’t clean or seal any of the tile in the entire house.   

9. Kurt hires unlicensed subcontractors - Kurt Dys has to hire some subs that are actual companies, and some of those did great work, however, in an effort to cut costs, he uses unlicensed subs for other parts of the job. We found out that one of the two Superintendents that he fired, he re-hired as the “trim” guy, to do the base boards, door casing and beams in the great room. Door casings not square, beams put up with twisted boards and random baseboard installation (some rooms have them, some rooms have some baseboards, and the pool bath has never had any trim work completed at all. Then Efrain, the pool guy he hired was a category five disaster, unlicensed and unresponsive. Literally showed up 1 day a month. It took Efrain 7 weeks to shoot the gunite for the pool and he did that wrong. Drywall company (likely licensed) was another disaster. They completely covered one of the 4 can lights in the exterior entry way, covered 6 outlets, missed putting drywall on 2 large passthroughs along with many other areas and had to come back 3 times to "fix" it and it's still not done.    

10. Britani Pichardo (Purchasing Manager) is a complete joke that Kurt hired after she “left” a flooring and interior company (a representative from the company states that she was fired),  She explained to my wife that she learned everything she knows from a colleague at this former company and that colleague routinely “pads” numbers to increase profit. Ironically, when we were given the Cabinet numbers for the house, we were told we went $18k over budget. My Wife and I both told Kurt that it is impossible that we went over budget that much, we didn’t make that many changes. It was then that Kurt’s attitude changed, he shrugged his shoulders and said “it is what it is” then proceeded to tell us a very detailed and graphic sob story about his wife leaving him for a very specific guy that he hates more than anything, because her hormone imbalances cause her to cheat on him, yet cognizant enough to tell us to keep all this from his sister (Pam) because she is a gossip and can't keep her mouth shut. This is none of our business, don't care, doesn't concern us, and should have no impact on his business, however, he seemed to use that as an excuse to “check out” of our build. It took me 3 weeks to convince this flooring and design company to give me the line-item view of the cabinets, only to find out that we were being double charged for the Laundry Room cabinets and the Dry Bar cabinets, to the tune of $10k. Once we brought this to Kurt’s attention, he fired them and pointed us to one of 2 other options, another Wellborn dealer, or Mid-Continent Cabinetry. We were encouraged by Kurt to choose Mid-Continent Cabinetry because of their lead time being 6-8 weeks. That lead time turned into 9 Months. The Mid-Continent rep was very addiment that he was directed by Kurt Dys to NOT give us pricing, letting us know that we shouldn’t know what things cost.    

11. Britani’s math is that of a 1st grader. Many times, we received computations on additional charges, installation charges that should have already been included, but now, all the sudden are “extra” charges. Example – Britani quoted $17-$20/SF to install 94SF of Pool Tile for a cost of $2375.00. The top $20 x 94SF = $1880. When I brought this math error to Kurt’s attention, his response was “Moving forward any change will be priced once and given to you for a review and if you do not want it, the product will not be installed”    

12. Britani also took it upon herself to change the colors of our cabinets in 2 rooms and a tile color change in one of the bathrooms. If it was not for my wife’s constant review of Britani’s work, and the interior designer’s review of the Color Sheet, we would have ended up with a disaster in color matching and look of the home. The phenomenal interior designer that was contracted by DiamondBuilt to work with us was so professional and ethical that she went to defended us to Kurt when he was trying to go back on his word about pricing and ignore costs of items detailed specifically in the contract.  It became so difficult for her to work with them that she resigned.   

13. FALSE Advertisement - Items we did outside the build – We had chosen to do some things outside of the build, not involving Kurt Dys at all. Kurt has given us ZERO reason to trust him or believe that he could even manage the simplest projects, plus, we were never given any options nor asked what we would like to see in the home as it pertains to features. Given our experience with Kurt, we chose to hire California Closets to do the 2 Master Bedroom closets and the Pantry. While they were installing those, Patricia (Kurt’s  wife) came to take pictures of the install, claiming on their social media that DiamondBuilt had made this happen and posted those pictures on their FaceBook page. We also hired a private contractor to install floating shelves and cabinets in the Great Room and again, Patricia took photos, posted on their FaceBook page, and gave credit to DiamondBuilt  for that install as well. Finally, the same happened with the detached garage. Kurt did have the concrete Pad built, but all coordination with the vendor was done by me and the install was managed by me, however, here comes Patricia to take pictures for their facebook page as something they did.   Kurt has homes posted on his website (pinned towards the top) that he claims to have built. Beautiful homes, one with an amazing pool. Oddly though, he informed us that our pool would be his first pool build as he has just received the OK to manage pool builds. Not really sure if he built it or not, but I can tell you from what we have dealt with for our pool, he is clueless as to the requirements of a pool build. Lights are considered an upgrade as is a heater for a hot tub, even though it’s all detailed in our engineered plans he gave us.  You will pay twice for those.    

14. Detached garage pad is a whole separate issue. I have waited for this to be completed since January 2021 (was my first ask) and as of August 12th, 2021, I was told that dirt was a requirement. SO, I, as the CUSTOMER, had dirt delivered, 7 loads to be precise. 2 of those loads were used for Pool backfill and the rest was spread out for the Detached garage pad. I was told that quickly after that, the pad would be poured. I was then given a pour date of the 1st week of October. As of October 18th, 2021, I have been told that it is more than a month out for the garage pad concrete. On October 29th, the Garage permit had expired, one day after Kurt finally had someone come out and dig the footers. Now, the inspection can’t be done because of the permit expiration. Kurt’s answer was to wait and see what happens. I have a garage install date of 11-22-2021 from the garage folks after pushing them out twice already. Per direction from Pam Dys-Kelly, in the absence of the active permit, to keep the slab pour on schedule, I should hire a 3rd party inspection, which I did, costing me $500.00. Now, after the building is nearly complete (literally 3 hours out from writing this at 1:45PM on 11/23/2021) I am told that the final inspection cannot happen because the county Permitting office needs to see the letter from the independent inspection. NOW, I have to take time off work, to drive this out to Dade City Building Department to get resolved. Why did I hire DiamondBuilt since I have to do SO MUCH on my own build?    

15. Pool – After receiving our pool plans in April 2021, I had only one problem with them, the Hot Tub heater was listed as Gas and should have been electric. I brought that to the attention of Kurt Dys and was promptly told that “I’m not sure what you’re referring to. It was sold as a basic pool with a spa and sun shelf as the plans showed. I told you that if you wanted to add upgraded equipment you could work with Efrain (unlicensed pool builder except for shooting gunite).” Kurt also stated that the pool Engineer had no authority to add those items to the plans. I failed to see how that becomes my problem and should be a conversation between Kurt and the Engineer. Given that Kurt was not going to install the items that were literally spelled out (with part numbers) in the Pool PLANS, I was somewhat stuck and decided to have Efrain (unlicensed pool guy) install the bubblers and gave him $2100 to do that (if we didn’t do it now, we would have to dig up the entire paver sections of the pool deck, cut into the pool shell and who knows what happens then). A couple months into this, Kurt decided to fire Efrain, and there goes my money and lights. Kurt has sent me a total of $17k in additional “upgrades” charges to the pool package for items already included in the Engineered Plans. This was the final straw, the last I can take of him continually trying to rip us off. My attorney sent a letter to Kurt in an attempt to persuade him to do the right thing by the contract, otherwise, we will file a full lawsuit for breach of contract. He ignored the letter for weeks before we hired another attorney who specializes in real estate/construction law and litigates these cases.  After she sent her letter, he made the decision not to abide by the contract and plans.  

16. Builder’s Risk Policy – Kurt has prolonged this build to the point where I have had to pay an additional $2150 for an additional policy extension. Kurt is blaming the duration on product availability when in reality, we are 3 months behind on cabinets because after the first cabinet company exposed Kurt for double charging us on cabinets, Kurt fired them and we had to start all over, causing the 3-month delay, combined with Kurt's inability to multi-task, we were screwed out of the gate.    

17. An individual happened to call us while we were at the house one day and asked my wife for a reference for DiamondBuilt. My Wife felt like she was being “punked” and asked if Kurt gave her our number. She replied that he had not, and she found us through his facebook page posts by researching the owner of the property. and decided to call some people that Kurt was currently building houses for, not the hand selected references of friends, realtors and subcontractors. We told her some of the issues outlined here and she said that was plenty and thanked us for our time. Not sure who she went with, but it does not appear to have been Diamond Built.    

18. Kurt doesn’t pay his subcontractors on time and has them call the Homeowner’s to ask for payment. Example: Pavers installed in the pool area in November 2021 and on  January 14th, 2022, I got a call from the Paver guy saying that he called Kurt for payment and Kurt told him to call us. We never pay Diamond Built subs directly, obviously, and Kurt never pulled the Pool Tile or Driveway, walkways draws from the bank to cover the Tile/Paver installation (we bought our own tile by the way) and has not paid the Paver guy in over 6 weeks. We explained this to the Paver guy. Update on 01-18-2022 – Paver guy reached out to me saying that Kurt Dys told him this morning that he was waiting for a Pool Draw, which has not been requested to the bank yet, weird. The Paver guy also stated that Kurt owes him $34,000 for Paver installation (a touch over 4000 sq ft, front and back), Pool beam fix (from the previous pool guys poor work), grading of the outdoor living area and around the pool, coping installation and tile installation. According to the Paver guy, Kurt gave him $15k at the end of January and told him to get the rest from us via a lien on our property.    

I have so much more but honestly, I am tired of writing this review. I would say that if we can stop one more person from going through this major disaster we have gone through, this review is worth every letter typed.