Elevate Design Build

I emailed Greg with my list of things that needed to be done around the house. Victoria, his scheduler, set up a time for Greg to come out to give me an estimate. He arrived on time. We went over my list as we walked around the house. He gave suggestions on how he would fix the items one by one and answered all my questions. A few days later I received an estimate with item by item description of the work to be done and price of what I would be expecting for each item. He answered any questions I had within a few hours of emailing him. We set up a day for his crew to come out to do the job. Two of his crew members came at the appointed time. They even put on paper shoe covers to protect my floors. They started on the surround sound system which took most of the day because it required feeding wires behind my walls or in the crawl space below the house. The painter showed up an hour later and he started recaulk in bathroom counters then went outside to paint the rafters. The last guy showed up a few hours later who helped out and also did the texturing on the walls that needed patching from the surround sound system installation and removal of the smoke detectors. They were able to finish everything by about 5:30 pm, except for painting the walls because the texturing needed more time to dry. Before they left they called Victoria to schedule their painter to come out to finish the project the following week. They cleaned up before they left. The painter came the following week to finish the painting as scheduled. Overall, I was very pleased with the work they did. The crew was very professional, polite and hard working. I would definitely use them again.

As stated on tape, office person Victoria responds to calls within 24 hours. In response to first call (within about an hour), she indicated that (1) Greg Skeen's Help U Fix charges $60.00/hr. with a two hr. minimum, (2) mailbox installation usually takes about two hours, (3) she advises that people have a short list of other small projects (such as caulking) so that if minimum is not reached, installer will fill up the time with the other projects, and (4) I should order the mailbox and post first and then schedule a visit by Greg Skeen to provide a more accurate estimate. A few weeks later, after obtaining the mailbox and post and checking to ensure that the instructions and required parts were in the box (purchased a missing 5/16" washer), I e-mailed to Victoria a description of the exact mailbox and post ordered, and also stated that the project would include removing the old mailbox and post (which we did not discuss on our first call). E-mail stated that I wished to obtain an estimate and/or schedule the work as applicable. Victoria responded via e-mail that the estimate would be 2 to 4 hours and that we could go ahead and schedule the project for the following week. We did so. Installer called from driveway at precisely the time scheduled (one hour window and he called at the beginning of that window). He specifically confirmed that I did in fact want to place the new mailbox in exactly the same place as the old one instead of placing it beside the old one, explaining that it would take more time to dig out the old concrete. I confirmed this. He then got to work and was still able to finish within two hours. He charged for two hours plus $30 for the rapid-dry concrete. While $60/hour might seem a bit high for handyman work, it is the same hourly rate that another handyman service charged me for installing a gate in my wooden fence a couple of years ago. Also, Greg Skeen's installer had all of the correct equipment and clearly had installed mailboxes before. He didn't waste time. Someone without the proper equipment would have taken twice as long. The total price was about the same as what another contractor quoted to me a few years ago in a casual conversation at a party about what it might cost to install a mailbox.