PAYNE/BOUCHIER

The single worst experience I have ever had with a contractor of any sort. My experience includes over 7 residential buildings and several major industrial projects over 25 years. The person who they had supervising the job was incompetent and lazy, and I finally had to have Payne/Bouchier remove him from the job. The replacement was much better. The people they had did a sub-standard job, and there were several days when nobody was working at all. I would arrive for a scheduled meeting with the site supervisor from our temporary quarters 2 hours away and he would not show up or arrive late. Payne/Bouchier managers unable/unwilling to take action when problems were brought up to them. Example: Location of medicine cabinet. Wall not framed for it correctly. so I located it on plan, discussed with site supervisor. When it was not installed next visit, I discussed with partner in firm, assured it would be located correctly. They had bathroom finish painted and when we inspected complete it was not installed at all! When they installed it after the fact, the damaged the wall, and did not repair it. They had one painting estimate. The only person who could do it on such short notice, according to them. Reason: Because they had not asked for quotes on painting until 3 days before they were ready to paint. At that point I had no choice, but let the expensive person paint the first bathroom ($3000) and had another person who I picked who did the other two bathrooms, the ceilings, the hallway and other damaged items ($2000). Thier painter did a much poorer job for more money. This is only a fraction of the problems we had, and now we have two failed bathroom tiling jobs where the tiling people were back in and said it was not their fault, that Payne Bouchier did a poor job and caused the cracking. Don't know if I believe that -- we have a well recommended person coming in to break out the old tile and mud job, repour concrete and install new tile to see if we can rectify this problem. In the end, he bathroom tile work is cracking in both showers, the detail molding is cracked and pulling away from the ceilings, the door and casing in one bathroom is not connected to the floor, one of the medicine cabinets is mounted 5 inches too high (they put the electric in the wrong place) and I have a sour taste in my mouth. In the meantime I have several other people with whom I have talked who had also had problems of this sort with PB, and held back much more money from them than I did, and also had to hire other people to clean up PB's mistakes and problems. What a horrible group of people to work with. Great on the quotes, and before the job starts, horrible on the execution. STAY AWAY FROM THESE PEOPLE. Feel free to contact me if you feel the need for further info.

The estimator was very sincere and communicated well. They are well known in the area to truly focus on detailed aesthetics of a home to make it historically correct. During the evaluation, the employee completed a thorough job. The Better Business Bureau rates them very well. I did not hire them as I did not need extensive work as I only wanted a general, middle of the road job. Their pricing was way higher than their competition.