GLOBE CONSTRUCTION INC

They blocked my cars in my driveway without telling us and left debris in my lawn that bent the blades on my mower and refused to help Then when I talked to then about it they denied responsibility and were very rude about the situation

Service was prompt and professional. These guy's are the best. Thanks again and my apologies for the late review.

Globe did an excellent job. Great family business with great employees. From start to finish there was never any trouble communicating with them. The removal crew was a blast to watch, very skilled equipment operator. The whole process was went quickly and looks amazing.

Amazing! Couldn't be happier from start to finish.

No warranty, poor execution, low quality. The owner came out for an initial review of the work, and appeared interested and professional. Work was delayed for several months due to his busy schedule, which was reasonable. When we asked him to provide us later with a formal estimate, he returned and then gave us a piece of paper with nothing but the price. No drawings, no details, no measurements..... and no warranty. We should have looked elsewhere at that point, but as my parents had waited 5 months (since the prior spring) for the work to be initiated they were getting worried it was going to be hard to get another contractor before the winter months. So we went ahead. It turns out the city of Oak Park did not hire Globe Construction due to the high quality of their work. They only chose the contractor who gave the lowest estimate. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for.... Workmen arrived on the appointed day. Work was completed in a reasonable amount of time. Some carelessness during work, as they broke two squares of our neighbor's sidewalk (!), which they then had to replace. They also damaged the roots of my neighbor's tree when they were riding their maintenance vehicles on the lawns. We appreciated that the owner was present often throughout the day to oversee, and he did some of the fine detailing/smoothing of the cement at the end. The color of the cement (very white) and surface texture was not as nice as the prior cement work we had done on the house 20 years ago, and looked odd. The edges were jagged in places with uneven spacing between squares - just sloppy work. Does not look nice or professional. These were actually things that would have been easy to do correctly if he had done a simple drawing with measurements ahead of time, and looked at the edges of his mold before pouring. No instructions were given after the work was done about any special care/maintenance of the cement. We did not use any salt in the soon to be coming winter months. Well, the cement is of poor quality, and doesn' t last. It started chipping after the first freeze in November. Now (spring) there are a couple large divots out of the cement in the back of the house, and irregular surface holes and chips in the front and the back. And it gets better. We were awakened by jack hammers early in the morning in December by city workers, breaking up some of the new cement adjacent to the street. City inspectors had noticed that Globe Construction had damaged/bent the surface drain pipe access (?Buffalo box) adjacent to the sidewalk. Unfortunately they didn't alert us ahead of time, but they destroyed part of the brand new sidewalk to repair the pipe. And they can't replace it until June of 2011! And then winter came.... with a hole in the ground where cement used to be..... and the area of cement that Globe Construction was supposed to slope downhill to prevent water standing/ice formation was not improved. They had not tilted the new sidewalk properly, and water continued to pool. So in summary, the brand new sidewalk did not improve the main problem we hired them for (prevent water pooling), they damaged my neighbor's side walk, they damaged city property during construction leading to the city destroying part of the sidewalk (!), and the sidewalk itself was of poor quality in texture, pouring detail/edges and didn't even last 3 months. I gave Globe construction a poor score for professionalism. The owner did not follow up with phone calls to confirm when the work would be started. His estimate was poorly documented. He claimed he would do higher quality work, "like I would do on my own home", when we re-iterated problems we had had with prior contractors - and clearly did not. He appeared irritated on the day of the job when I had to take my father to the Emergency Room and I had explicitly told him prior to the job that he had to keep an access path free from the house, for safety. He said he would come to clean up the debris 2 days after the job, but didn't, and we had to call to ask him to return. He did return by the end of the week. Interestingly, Oak Park will not be using this contractor again for their public work. I suspect we were not the only ones who had a poor experience. I called the company last week and left a message, asking them to call me back so I could give feedback on the job. They never called me back. This was not unexpected. *** Update on 5/26/11 The Oak Park village engineer came out to see the sidewalk, and to plan on repairing the "hole". In light of the poor work that Globe construction did, and the inconvenience and financial loss we took due to this, the city will repair part of the cement that continues to pool water and the sloppily poured walkway to the street. This is only about 1/4 of the total job Globe messed up, but it is the most important part for the safety of those using this walkway. We are very grateful to Oak Park for this, although we are still very sorry that Oak Park led us to this terrible contractor.