Greg wrote:
I can't see how if he had it apart when he upped it the first time, how he
could then justify an addtional 1100 bucks, all of which would have to be
labor as the cost of materials couldn't have gone up that from start to
finish of the job.

I'm going to take a wild stab at this and guess that you've never done
any remodeling. In any event, regardless of your apparent lack of
experience, you have no information to support your assumptions -
certainly not enough to pass judgment.

I had asked the OP a question which went unanswered. It gets to the
root of the matter. If the father felt comfortable letting the
contractor work unsupervised while he was out of the country, and
agreed that additional work needed to be done due to unforeseen
conditions, why is the son getting involved? Is he "protecting" his
father or just sticking his two cents into something he doesn't
understand?

I'm in Canada too, lets say he charges $50.00 an hour,
that's 22 hours of labor, that's 1/2 a chimneys worth on top of the original
second quote.

They don't charge for materials where you are? Using numbers to
illustrate a bad assumption is worse than the bad assumption. Did the
contractor have additional labor? I'd assume so - putting up a chimney
is rarely done alone, and almost never by a contractor. Two helpers?
What if there was damaged framing that needed to be replaced? Did the
contractor do it himself or hire it out? You see my point. No
information makes for nothing more than a guessing game.

You will not get complete information from the son, as it's his opinion
that the work was unnecessary and it's only one side of the story.
Besides that, he wasn't part of the agreement. Did you wonder why the
father didn't tag the son to be the supervision while he was away?
Kind of curious, no?

R