Contractor ruined my floors, walls, flooded the house, cut holes in the wrong spots in the tub insert. He was in my home May-July (he stated this job would take 3 days) we had no contract signed and was told to complete the job or he would be let go with no pay at all. Once he left you still could not use the shower. Now I see we have a mechanical lien on my house. What can I do?
The quickest way for a homeowner to remove a lien is to serve the lien claimant with a Notice to Commence Suit. After the Notice is served, the lien claimant is required to commence a lawsuit to foreclose the lien within 60 days. Failure to commence suit results in a failure of the lien itself, which frees up the title to the property and removes the lien as an encumbrance. The downside to this approach is that you could end up in a lawsuit.
An alternative is to bond off the lien, but that does nothing to solve the underlying problem. Bonding off the lien is a way for another company (a bonding or surety company, like an insurance company) to step in and tell the title company (or the purchaser of the property in a transaction) "it's ok, we will handle any issues with this lien if they ever actually pop up." This is a decent short-term fix, but it really does nothing to get rid of the issue, so you may be revisiting it in a few years.
Lastly, you can also sue to remove the lien. and preempt the other actions mentioned above.