G.R. Builders

Are you looking for a turn-key contractor who pays attention to every little detail, makes sure things are done correctly to completion, and stands behind his work? If the answer is yes to any or all of these questions, you'd better keep looking. Taking the advice of a couple contacts who had much smaller jobs done (some interior work for one, and a bathroom for the other), we hired Gary Dunaway to completely renovate our small house and add a garage with an apartment above it. We re-wired and re-plumbed everything, with Gary charging his percentage on the bills. More than once, we were presented with unattributed bills - bills which specified an amount of money to be paid, but no details. The electrician did this, flooring firm, etc. and Gary's response was - "just pay it." This was strange to us, but Gary assured us he was keeping track of the job and that the firms were charging by the job, not per individual item. We always paid on time, and in full - which was one of our gigantic mistakes. We were told by Gary to explain to the electrician what we wanted for switches, wiring, fixtures, etc. and he'd "take care of it." Well, we not only explained our desires and specifications to the electrician, but to Gary and his foreman as well - for all the good it did us. It really didn't seem like anyone involved with wiring the house paid attention - we now have can lights seemingly haphazardly placed in our kitchen, illogically routed wiring to the breaker panel, chandeliers on the same switch as can lights, etc. The electrician actually mis-wired our electrical in-line hot water heater and our ceiling fans, even though he had the wiring diagrams! Gary told me in a follow-on conversation that "I don't really know anything about wiring a house, I count on my subcontractors to handle that." We certainly wish we had known that he didn't know anything about wiring a house before we hired him as a contractor, and before we paid him to supervise the wiring of our house. Our issues weren't confined to the electrical realm, though, unfortunately. The plumber was maybe worse due to his horrible attitude - he didn't even act like he was paying attention. To be fair, both the electrical and plumbing systems meet code requirements, but neither turned out to be the sort of product one would expect with a ground-up total renovation from an expensive, established contractor. Gary and his crew installed door locks which he knew were faulty (I saw him trying to take the key out of the lock with a pair of pliers) and left them for us to resolve. They also buried the french drains 1/2" below the ground, which exposed the white pvc pipe after the third hard rain. Obviously, we had to contact the hardware shop and work our schedules around getting the locks addressed, and had to re-seat the three drain pipes properly - Gary couldn't seem to find the time to address our issues because, by this point, we had paid him for the work. Calls started taking days, then weeks to be returned. He explained a two-plus week delay in getting back to me by saying he had gone golfing and forgot his phone! As these problems started manifesting themselves, one of our showers started leaking. Gary came over, confirmed it was definitely leaking, then basically left coordination of the repairs, dealing with the bathroom folks, etc. to us. Again, to be fair, Gary's foreman oversaw the repair day for that shower - but it wasn't fixed for OVER FOUR MONTHS!! We have since had additional electrical and plumbing issues, another leaking shower (problematic, as we only had two showers installed in the house), etc. and Gary simply doesn't return calls anymore. He began coordination for the repairs, then abruptly cancelled the day before he was supposed to show up and address the shower - his thoughts seemed to be that we were unreasonably asking for things he shouldn't have to address. We thought it was reasonable to expect leak-free showers - silly us. The reasons for the ratings have to do with the number of issues we have had - as for price, well, Gary told us from the beginning he was expensive. We were under the misimpression that the cost was going to be reflected in the final product. So- a "D" for price is even Gary's admission. Quality has to be a "C" when you have a series of plumbing problems, electrical problems, leaking bathrooms, etc. Responsiveness - well, what would you say if your specifications were ignored during the construction of the house, then it took weeks for your contractor to return a call bacause he was "golfing?" "D" Not sure about the "punctuality" one - we had cancelled appointments that we took leave to address, and had to take leave to address issues we had already paid our GC for, so "D" was assigned here. And by now, the "D" for professionalism should be obvious.

Job went pretty well. Master carpenter John is awesome; despite his age of 60, he performed about 85% of the total labor himself (no exaggeration), working directly from the architect's plans. There were subcontractors only for excavation, pouring concrete, electrical and plumbing work, stone work, drywalling, and flooring (we did the painting ourselves to shave the overall cost). Everything else John did himself, usually alone (which he acxtually prefers), from ground to roof. G.R. head Gary Dunaway paid frequent visits to monitor progress and check in with us, often pitching in to help his guys while present. He also obligingly kept up with our e-mailed questions and change requests. This was a "design-build" job, where the architect draws where walls and such should be and what size, and what the final result should look like, but leaves the structural and other details to the builder to work out. I was apprehensive of this approach at first, but this came out well. There are a couple of quibbles, but that happens with any building job. Overall, we are quite happy with the final results.