We are super grateful and happy that we chose to work with PHS, Brandon, and Juan for our total home renovation in NE DC. The scope of our home renovation was to: tear out all existing hardwood, tear out the staircase across 4 levels of our home, reconfigure all interior walls, lay new hardwood flooring, tear our a chimney across 2 floors, and add a bathroom to our attic. This was a near, full-gut job. We ended up not touching our kitchen nor basement at all due to budget constraints. Breaking down our experience working with them: - Contract: PHS was one of the last contractors we reached out to, but Brandon ended up being one of the fastest to respond, come our to the house to take a look, and then eventually submit an incredibly detailed proposal. Brandon was willing to answer a million questions about the contract language, amend language where needed, and customize the proposal to us. Brandon was also willing to work with us to refine scope, separately price items, and adjust the contract in some areas to fit our budget. PHS came in middle of the pack on price which made us feel comfortable about our choice. We felt confident in Brandon and PHS that they would not nickel-and-dime us, bury us in change orders, or inflate the price in anyway. - Communication: I was blown away with the level of communication we had from start to finish on this project. Brandon would respond to every text, voicemail, or email in <24 hrs, and in most cases within an hour or two. I don't think a single day went by in our 10.5 month project where we didn't hear from Brandon or Juan in some regard. Brandon and Juan took effort to talk through choices, offer advice (both creative and construction), and ensure we were kept in the loop during months we were out of town. - Quality of Work: Brandon's onsite construction manager Juan was an absolute pleasure to work with. Juan has immense attention to detail, was willing to correct errors or minor mistakes without any questions/issue, and there were absolutely ZERO cut corners on our job. Brandon and PHS' mottos of "no cutting corners," "doing things the right way," and "making their customers happy/putting them first" were adhered-to from start to finish. When there were design flaws that our separate architect didn't catch, Brandon and team took the liberty to get it done the right way (with our permission) despite what the design showed. Near the very end of the project when we noticed light switch was in the wrong place, Brandon and team solved the problem with no questions asked. Brandon and Juan were truly interested in making us happy, ensuring we loved our home, and making sure they did things the right way, with high quality, and high professionalism. We didn't notice any cut-corners or "half-assed" work. - Schedule: if there is one less-than-stellar thing to report, it's that our initial 4-6 month construction schedule (after building permit issuance) ended up taking 9.5 months with a few odds and ends still to fix after we moved in. To be fair, there were some owner-directed scope changes that may have impacted the schedule on the magnitude of a few weeks, but nothing that would have caused work to completely stop in the meantime. Certainly Brandon and Juan hit some snags that were outside of their control: vendors getting COVID, scheduling delays getting inspections done, key staff getting sick, a handful of weather delays, but frankly work did not move as rapidly at times as we would have expected. The work was always done with high craftsmanship and quality, but there were several instances where it seemed like little-to-no work would get done in a given week. I think that perhaps the key staff and subs got spread thin on some competing projects, but things picked up once a separate project or two of theirs wrapped up and they could dedicate more staff to our project. All of this being said, Brandon was absolutely a man of his word and honored the clause in our contract that compensated us for the schedule overage per terms of our contract. The rent reimbursement clause in our contract was a big reason we decided to work with PHS and Brandon, and we were happy that he upheld his end of that bargain. It seems like schedules will always be busted on construction projects, so I don't think the schedule overage was anything unique to PHS, but our experience was no different. However, again, PHS and Brandon are unique and very accommodating to such schedule issues with their rent reimbursement promises. We cannot endorse PHS, Brandon, Juan, and their entire team enough. We were very nervous picking a contractor to gut and renovate our house while we left the area for several months, and Brandon and his team went above and beyond to assure us that everything would be okay, keep us in the loop, perform the work with high standards of quality, and be as accommodating to us as possible. My wife and I had absolutely no experience renovating a house, but Brandon and Juan made it easy on us. We trusted them with our family's home and we think you can too. We would hire them again in a heartbeat.