Prairieland Fine Carpentry

Too much charged for the work they actually did.

Not well.

Initially I was impressed with the owner and what I thought was his knowledge of "fine carpentry" since that is used in the title. However, throughout the project that should have taken no more than two weeks to complete(and that's being generous) the following occurred: * I found out a week after the first window was installed that carpenter ants had been found. The crew was instructed to put the new window in and I was not notified. Later, when one of the crew inadvertently told me about it, he said they had sprayed some bug spray in the opening. The owner said that all they could have done was leave the window out while the exterminator came out, that the exterminator probably couldn't have come right away (which he did - same day). This after knowing that I had previously had a termite problem on the same wall. It ended up costing me $150 for the exterminator and I can't be sure that the carpenter ants are gone. Additionally, some of the windows fog up which leads me to believe there continues to be a problem with them. *An extra window was ordered and put in without my knowledge. The owner attempted to make me pay for it, I refused, then he wanted to leave the trim off, I refused again (but it is unfinished), Lastly, he attempted to make me pay for the labor for the installation. I again refused but I must say he became "creative" in trying to do so (I felt insulted that he didn't think I was smart enough to figure out that he was trying to recoup some of his cost through labor). *About halfway through the job the owner pulled his crew off my house to complete his own project. Again, I found out by accident. Meanwhile, every room in my house was in upheaval and his equipment was left in my garage and driveway. *I was told that a child had installed my window cranks. I can believe that because some were on incorrect and some were loose. I felt taken advantage of again; paying "professional" fees for child's labor. *One of the upstairs windows was dropped on one of my shrubs. I understood that safety comes first, but I didn't appreciate that all the owner did was make a big joke about it. There were many other examples but this should paint a pretty scary picture. Not once did I get an apology, everything was a big joke to him, and I find the quality of the windows to be poor. They shouldn't have been used and were made to fit which will look tacky as they age over the years. I would not recommend this company to anyone!!!!!!

This is a true F review. Do not hire them. We hired another contractor to build a wrap-around porch, but he was too busy. So he subcontracted our job to this company. We couldn't find any reviews online, so we didn't object. We wish someone had reviewed them before us. Our one week project ended up taking 6 weeks. They never communicated when they would come work on it. If we called to ask, the owner Matt would promise to come out on a specific day. Guess who never showed up and didn't even call? They came out twice a week (maybe) and worked just 6-7 hours a day. When they did come, something was always wrong. When we questioned his work, he always pushed back, told us we were wrong and then wouldn't come back to our house for a few days. We had planned on building the porch ourselves, but were too busy and wanted it done quickly. We knew how the porch should have been built and easily spotted problems. A few examples of his poor craftsmanship included: piers that were not solid concrete, sheets of plywood on the roof secured with just a couple nails and the width of the overhang on our roof varies from foot to foot. In addition, he failed to read his copy of our plans and tried to extend the deck beyond what we wanted. Since we weren't supposed to have a deck there, we ran out of lumber. He ordered more without informing us and then wanted us to pay for his mistake. We called our main contractor to fire him, but he wanted the chance to "make it right". It's something we truly regret. Prairieland did not come out the next day as promised (of course) and continued their shoddy work when they did come back. We finally had enough and told him they had until XX to finish it or be done. They came out and did more work in one day than had been done in three prior work days. On this day, the owner actually came to our house and did work, the only day we saw him do anything. Most days, he was not present. Unfortunately, he wasn't a better craftsman than his workers. Before installing plywood, he did not secure the top of the trusses to our house. As they installed the plywood and walked on the roof, almost all of the trusses under the new plywood moved and tilted to one side. The tilting compromised the structural integrity of the roof. They did come back the next morning to fix the trusses. It was a cool morning so I had the windows open. To my disbelief, I heard the owner and another worker saying nothing but negative things about us and our house. Everything about their conversation was inappropriate. All in all, they were unprofessional, incompetent and lazy. You hear it all the time, but I really I wouldn't recommend them to my worst enemy. The whole experience was horrible.