CLARY

Very well. No issues. Completely satisfied.

see review above

We signed the contract in January or February. The first step was to get the permit. In order to get the permit we needed a septic system inspection (even though we weren't adding any bathrooms, sinks, toilets, or bedrooms). We failed. Steve Clary worked tirelessly to get this resolved, he worked with the Palm Bay building department, the health department and ultimately drove to Tampa to sit in on the state of Florida waiver board to convince them to allow us to do the work without having to completely rebuild the septic system (which happens to work perfectly and has been working perfectly for 27 years). He succeeded! Finally construction started in May. The estimate was 6-8 weeks. We didn't finish the majority of the work until the end of August. So much for 6-8 weeks. We didn't actually give the final payment until Oct 4 and as of Nov 27 we still have one tiny little thing that has yet to be resolved. But in spite of the length of time, we're delighted with the result. The final product is beautiful. Prior to signing the contract with Clary, we had gone to a designer to draw up the plans. Therefore when we got the estimate for the cost, we knew that it should be accurate. We did not change anything in the design once construction began. Clary was able to build most of the new section of the house from the outside without breaking into the existing structure. For several weeks they did the foundation work, the plumbing, the exterior walls, and the roof from the outside. Once all that was complete, they closed off the existing bedroom so that the dirt/dust didn't enter the house. The addition included a window and while doing most of the work, they used that window as a temporary door. So all of the demolition, interior framing and most of the drywall were completed by entering through that and quot;windowand quot;. That meant we did not have construction workers walking through the house. We really appreciated that. Even after the window was installed (required for inspection), they still entered by climbing through the window. It was only at the very end for the finish work such as flooring that they needed to come through the house. This was the first major construction project we'd ever done and given the horror stories I've heard from other people I have to say we were generally very pleased. The little glitches were caused by communication. I.e. we'd tell Steve Clary something, he'd tell Charles Clary who would tell Steve Balzer who would tell the sub. And then it would end up wrong and they'd have to redo it. The toughest ones were the electrical wiring (pot lights in the wrong place, outlets in the wrong place etc), the plumber that couldn't seem to get the faucets to work right, the tile guy they forgot to tell about how the shower floor should be done. We communicated by email, texting and phone. Sometimes I didn't know who I was supposed to talk with. Lessons learned from all of that - it's critically important to stay on top of things and never assume that just because you've already discussed something and agreed upon it that it'll happen the way you want. The only portion of this whole job that I wasn't thrilled with was the final price. We had a cost plus contract (not fixed price). This was a mixed blessing. No matter what happened, they were always more than willing to take care of it - no matter how many times they needed to fix / rearrange etc. On the other hand we had to pay for all that. In the end we paid far more than the original estimate. Some of that was due to our choices. I have no problem with that. But we were still at least $5000 over estimate for things that we had no control over (such as materials or what the subs charged). Steve showed us every single bill and went through all charges and was able to justify all the costs but I would have been happier if the estimate had been more accurate. $5K is a lot of money to be and quot;offand quot; by. Final thoughts: I'm still delighted with the job that was done, the quality of the workmanship, the professionalism and I'd definitely recommend them. I'm not sure whether I'd do cost plus again though.