S + H Construction Inc

The S&H Construction Supervisor failed to provide me his contact information and on the agreed start date of the project he failed to show up. I tracked him down through their main office and asked about status. I was told that the sub contractor was sick and that they would not show up on time. Over the next several days the supervisor was seldom on-site which was what I had contracted with S&H to do. Any information received was the result of me reaching out and finding him. He did not advocate on my behalf and never inspected the work that was done. After several days I asked that the supervisor be replaced. The response from the owner of the company was to unilaterally withdraw from the project and cancel my building permit. I had to get a new permit and restart the project. I spoke to the owner who told me that they could not meet my expectations for quality and information and that they were withdrawing from the project. S&H is totally unprofessional and should be avoided at all costs. I had the same contractor provide similar services last year and their supervisor caused thousands of dollars in damage as a result of outright carelessness but I was willing to give them another opportunity; clearly a mistake on my part. S&H is a company that use to provide high quality work but the company was sold and the new owner is simply coasting off of the reputation and the work of the previous owners. I won't make the mistake of hiring them again.

S+H was grossly negligent with the roof construction. They bought plywood sheathing for the roof. One sheet of plywood that they installed at the edge of the roof had a large hole. They put shingles on top of the plywood and its hole, but did not use any industry standard protection. No ice and water shield. No tar paper or roofing felt. Nothing. They left the hole unprotected from the elements, except for the roof shingles. After several years of water entering the addition structure, a spot finally appeared on the ceiling corner of my garage. A roofer inspected and found the roof hole above that area of the ceiling, and repaired the roof by patching over the hole. A year or so later, another issue arose - a bird pecked into the exterior siding near that area of the roof. A contractor came over to repair that piece of siding, but discovered that water had caused extensive rot to the addition structure. We were greatly surprised, since there had been no visible evidence of there being such a significant problem. All of the rot was now completely dry, because the roof repair stopped further water from entering. But the many years of allowing water to enter had already done its damage. I called S+H and spoke with the prior owner who still worked at S+H. I told him about the extensive rot –it was so bad that the structure was unsafe and was sure cost over $50,000 to repair. He said he was going on vacation, but would talk to his insurance. Over the next 4 weeks while the structure was being repaired, I had many email contacts with S+H. They did not deny responsibility, except in one odd email from the S+H owner. I write “odd”, because it makes no sense. She wrote that S+H needed to look at the hole to determine whether it caused the leak. That is “odd”, because patching the hole caused the leak to stop, and S+H was told that. And even more odd, because I offered to show the hole to S+H, but they refused to come to the house to look at the hole. And they refused to accept the statements of my home insurance adjuster, my general contractor and my roofer (who patched the hole). And, they wrote they were advised to not file a claim with their liability insurance – even though it is free and simple to file a claim (the insurance agency does the actual filing). They adamantly refused to do anything about the problem. No offer to help repair the house themselves. No offer to help pay for the repair. All they gave me was the contact information of their lawyer, in case I wanted to pursue them legally. I spent $70,000 to do the repairs needed because of the S+H gross negligence. Either they used non-professionals to do my roof, or they hired professionals who deliberately took shortcuts that were sure to cause grave damage to my house. S+H provided no justification for their response, except to write that they had a one-year warranty. That was a falsehood. I sent them a copy of their contract, which did not have a one-year warranty There were other problems with S+H, but I don't want to include them since that would distract from the major issue that I described above.

I have no complaint about the work itself. However, the lack of communication, consistent failure to do in a timely manner what had been promised, and complete failure to take responsibility for any of the delays has been infuriating. This project began in February. It is now almost mid-September and the roof work, the last bit, which I was told at the time of the estimate would begin in June, is still ongoing. When June came and went with the work not starting I asked for family reasons (upcoming wedding) to have it put off until August 18. I was told that was a hard date. Work would begin then. It didn't. I protested but that fell on deaf ears. Work began four days later when scaffolding was put up; I thought it would take a week or 10 days. I was out of town from Aug. 29-Sept. 7 and was under the impression that the roof work would be completed during my absence. When I got back I found the scaffolding still up and so far as I could tell no progress made at all. I expressed my unhappiness to both the project manager for the job and the president of S+H and the only response from either was that the roofer, a subcontractor, had been "very busy". Why hadn't he been "very busy" completing my job? Why hadn't S+H made sure that was the case? No answer. Since my return someone from the roofing company came to do copper work on the gutter (whether that was a result of my complaining or not I have no idea), but the project manager says the carpentry work, which is the next step and which will be done by S+H directly, won't be done until next week. More delay. I have no idea when the job will be completed. In the meantime, the scaffolding has made a gravel pit out of my Asian garden, and the workmen have destroyed a wooden bench in the garden, which was delicate to be sure but still sittable. In addition, I discovered yesterday that water was coming down the side of the house where the work is being done even though it wasn't raining. When I was able to get the attention of the roofer and asked him to find out why this was happening, he said it was from previous rain which was still in the gutter because the downspout had been disconnected. WHY??? If they needed to disconnect to do the work they're doing, they don't have to do it days if not weeks before the work is actually done. (It hadn't rained in quite some time.) He said he would temporarily correct the problem. I hope he did. I could go on and on; this kind of thing has gone on for months.

This is our second round of work with S+H (last year, they replaced our old, leaky wood gutters including much fascia and trim repair; did some basement structural work etc). Everyone tells me I am overpaying - though their initial quotes weren't far from what others had done for fixed bids. My guess is we're paying ~10-20% more than we could with other firms. In any case, the convenience, professionalism, commitment to quality (something is wrong - they fix it fast and don't charge me) is worth it. We're busy career-oriented folks who recently bought a 120 year old 2-family that needs everything and they've made it all as painless as possible (except for writing the checks, of course). Work has generally been on budget, though this went a little over because they were surprised at the extent of rotten wood and had to replace more of the step structure than originally thought. We also asked them to do more trim/siding repair than initially quoted. When you're on a time and materials contract, it's really easy to go over, but they know we're on a budget and communicate well (even if I never got "intermediate" budget updates so I could assess the overage in real time). We always have the same S+H project manager/GC and he knows our house well now. Seems to also use the same sub-contractor, too. They have enough bandwidth/relationships to get jobs done sooner rather than later.

Professional Received quote promptly Bid was higher than competitive bid

I had a leaky skylight and we contacted them in March of 2013. They agreed to do the work, sent us a contract and we had to give them a deposit of 800 dollars or something. they had to order the skylight because it wasn't something that was stocked but we didn't here from them for a long time. Both my husband and I repeatedly called them to say, we gave you a deposit and we haven't heard from you so finally they got back to us and they did the work in June. They took a sizable deposit and never got back to us and didn't return our phone calls. They gave us a cost within a frame running between 17,00 and 19,00 so we paid the remainder of the bill and then subsequently got another bill for a lot of money. They sent us this extra bill that they didn't explain to us, then they were very adamant about us paying it immediately after we received it so it was not a happy relationship. The good thing was that they did a good job but the way that they do business is horrible. They were very disrespectful to us and the way they dealt with us as clients was inexcusable.

This is an old-fashioned shop. There is someone who worked there for 20 yeqrs, and his son now works there. Doug Hanna, one of the owners, came by himself to check on progress. And they came in under budget ...

They connected us with the right architect for our needs, guided us through decisions at critical points in the process, and ensured that our job proceeded along amazingly quickly and efficiently. All of the team members and sub-contractors we worked with brought strong expertise and were extremely responsive and hard-working. We were particularly pleased that S+H was sensitive to our budget throughout the process and offered good advice on how to allocate our resources for the best result. We now love our new house!

They seemed pretty smart and thorough, but they also seemed a little over-eager to get the job and start going in a way that wasn't going to be to our best interest. The designer they recommended us to was a bust so that did not reflect well on them. And they were a little more expensive than other people we talked to. So, the reason we decided not to use them was because of their price and also because they were a little pushy.

The service provider never responded to my inquiry.

One of the owners and a project manager both showed up on time. They listened to our needs, and had already been responsive via email so they knew what to expect. They looked carefully at the potential site for the new laundry area and also suggested another area. They gave me an estimate when they said they would (about a week), and when we revised our plans, they sent a revised estimate a couple days later. They were professional and detail-oriented. My only complaint is that, when we realized the project was larger than we had anticipated and emailed them our regrets (saying we would like to do this in a couple years), we never got a response back.

We were really surprised, and frankly pretty disappointed with the way this project went forward based on the great reviews typically given to S&H. I've had friends and colleagues who used their services, and their reviews are solid. The work, while good quality craftsmanship, however, was disorganized, expensive, and ultimately didn't answer our most fundamental needs. We observed that our house siding was in pretty poor condition, but we wanted to paint, so we decided to invest in re-siding before painting. As a side job we were interested in eventually re-building the front porch, but didn't see it as the primary job for which we were contracting. After interviewing a few contractors, we hired S&H in early winter. They were able to get started pretty quickly, and immediately started on the porch. We deferred to their judgement, but asked that they really do approach the siding question. After four weeks of working on the porch, and multiple reminders that the siding was really the important part of the job for us, our project manager finally went up to rip off a shingle and see how bad it was. He realized that he had ripped off a fairly recent shingle in decent condition, but didn't go any further in checking out other shingles. We didn't have the shingles even approached for another two weeks. S&H hired a subcontractor to work on the siding sometime around New Years. They asked us to clear out the driveway because a crane was going to get parked there. It took another two weeks for the crane to show up, and another week for the siding folks to show up. They worked on our house for two days, and then cleared out, leaving a bunch of spots undone. We understood that they had "another job" that needed the crane. We started to get pretty itchy at this point. This project was now over two and a half months, mostly just waiting for people to show up - the longer it dragged out, the more we were paying. We asked S&H to look over the house, find other areas that needed replacement or were rotten and finish the job expediently. Apparently the siding folks came back (we didn't see them) and did something (we're not sure what), and S&H declared the job done. We identified at least four large areas on the house that were in pretty poor condition still, and asked S&H for their opinion of what should happen. We were told that painters usually did repairs before they got started. S&H declined to work on those parts of the house. We've now hired a painter that we really like and trust, and he's gone up on a ladder to the areas in poor condition (something S&H never actually did) and, not surprisingly, identified those spots as rotten and in need of replacement. So we called back S&H and asked them if they'd be willing to mobilize a carpenter to help finish the scoped job. Alex at S&H declined. Now we need to either find our own carpenter quickly, or pay the painter to hire one for us. He's got a contact who will do it, but I can't say this is ideal. We've had five decently large jobs performed by contractors while we've lived in this house (6 years), and have had good experiences just about each time. We talk to our contractors, we pay bills on time, we defer to their judgement, and we've had generally good work experiences. We really felt massively let down by S&H. I'm really baffled why over an entire winter, S&H couldn't just send over a carpenter for two days to do the basic work that our house required. They talked a good game and the quality of the work they actually performed was good, but I think that they might be overextended. If you work with them, I suggest writing a precise scope of work and a fairly precise timeline or end of project. For the first time, I'd actually consider writing in something about actually finishing the job for which they were contracted.

The step into our shower stall was leaking, causing it to swell so it was hard to open the door to the shower. S&H came out and gave us an estimate of around 8000-9000 (I don't have the paperwork anymore, so I don't remember the precise number). The estimate was considerably higher than other contractors we had through, but S&H had good reviews, and we had home repair fatigue (this was the last in a long list of repairs to a house we just bought), so we thought it would be worth it to pay a little more and not have to worry about being on top of all the details. They started roughly when they promised (maybe a few weeks later), and I think they fundamentally did a good job in the sense that I don't think the leak is likely to recur and the tile looks good. But there were several sloppy aspects to the job: (1) the tiler got the grout for the 1/2 bath bathroom floor and shower stall mixed up, with the result that I now have matching tile in the kitchen and bath that switches to very different grout color in the bath. This seemed very obvious to me; I would have expected that the tiler would have doublechecked with us once he started and saw the difference in color. (2) I had assumed that we would get a new trim kit for the shower since on the old existing one the cover for the circle inside of the shower wheel (not sure what you call it) had fallen off. We hadn't spoken about this specifically, but since we had spoken about the type of shower head we wanted and we were getting a new shower door I had assumed that they would not reinstall a clearly old and damaged shower trim. When I asked about this, it was apparently not possible to fix it without ripping out the new tile or going through the sheetrock in the back wall, and at this point I was so frustrated with S&H that I didn't want to run up more charges (see below); it's a major bummer to go into my nice new shower stall and stare at this broken handle every morning 3) the plumber they used somehow spilled some water in the process of doing the piping, which caused a water stain on the ceiling of the floor below. The job supervisor did let me know about this promptly and offered to have the stain painted over for free. At the end of the job I had to remind him to have this done, which he did, though the painters forgot one small spot, which is still on my ceiling.; 4)the painters dripped paint on the window and floor. I bear some responsibility for some of these in the sense that I should clearly have nailed down the details much more, but I had hoped that one of the advantages of hiring a general contractor was that they would suprivise the other contractors closely and notify me if there were choices to be made (e.g. whether to replace the trim). Live and learn, I guess. Another thing to know is that the S&H's "estimate" doesn't seem to bear any relation to the final cost--in the end they just bill time and material, whatever that turns out to be, without informing you that the bill is running much more. The bills come in long after the work, on two week cycles (I think the last bill came in a month after work was completed). The final bill was close to twice the estimate. There were additions to the original work (2 bathroom fans replaced, there was already venting etc in place for the old fans; and installing tile, which I purchased myself, in a tiny 1/2 bath over existing lineoleum), but it's hard to see how that would double the cost. It may be that when a general contractor is involved this kind of price change isn't unusual, but I've hired many specific contractors (roofing, deleading, driveway, tiling, cabinet maker, basement waterproofer, etc.) and I've never had a final price be so different from the estimate. This was particularly disturbing because the estimate was already significantly higher than the others, and I had chosen S&H because of good reviews/belief that their work would be good quality. When I explained to the job supervisor how unhappy I was with the final price, to their credit they did agree to knock $1000 off the price. I had gotten an estimate from S&H to do some landscaping/hardscaping for me, and I had planned to use them. Thank god they were very behind schedule and by the time they were ready to do the work I had already realized from the bathroom work that I did not want to hire S&H again.

I exchanged a number of emails with Doug, the owner of the company, where I described (in words and photos) what was needed, Doug provided a preliminary estimate for the job. Before the final estimate, a project manager Mike came out to do a physical inspection of the broken beam, and to do his own measurements. After Mike's visit, things moved very quickly. One of the carpenters assigned to work on the project came out the day before the work needed to be done to re-do measurements and propose his own plan for the work. The next day, two carpenters arrived on time, and proceeded to perform the work that was planned by the carpenter that visited the previous day. The carpenters were done in a day, and they cleaned up after themselves in a professional way. Since I was billed on a time and materials basis, I got to see the itemized amount of time that they billed for for the carpenters and for the project manager. I'm very happy with the work that was performed, but I feel that extra layer of management that took part in my small project was not very useful to me.

I was helping the owner and I think they are going to use them but they are waiting on permitting because it is in a historical area so it takes forever. Overall they seemed responsive when I was dealing with them. They were helpful. We went with them for at least the waterproofing. They were pretty prompt for the estimate. They gave 3 or 4 different options in terms of the grades of waterproofing to put on the floors. Having the options was a benefit for the client. The amount ranged from $2,000-$12,000. Everything on the estimate was clearly spelled out.

Please refer to "the services performed" box above. Overall, hiring S&H was a big mistake and our experience with them was not good.

S&H is a stand-up company, very professional on site and followed up with detailed paperwork. Their rates are clear and the scope of services is broken down very well. As with any General Contractor their all-encompassing services come at a premium. A fair premium, but unfortunately one that we couldn't afford to accomplish the scope of work we desired. That, and I am doing some of the work myself and playing GC. Frankly, I would have looked no further if we could have afforded S&H.

Doug and Sarah didn't charge her a penny and gave her some useful suggestions.

It was a free quote. The guy with whom I had interactions with was straightforward and down to earth. He was the only contractor that took pictures of everything, which I thought was smart. So, that stood out to me.

I looked them up on Angie's List, along with some other people. They seemed quite professional, but they were too big for the job. There was a lot of overhead and project management stuff that wasn't needed. I think they only do large jobs. They seemed efficient, but they were more expensive than I thought.

They were punctual and were honest to tell me that, they will not be able to do the job. They referred me to someone else, who could do the job. I will use their services in future.

Though this company gave me the quote we decided to go with another company. I would use S + H Construction Inc in the future.

He sent out another man. He sent me an estimate, which was for about $600 to $1200. I asked him if the quote was for $600 or $1200. He told me that it was the latter, which I was not comfortable with. There was a big difference between $600 and $1200. I have had trouble replacing my cabinet doors and trims. He was the only one, who said he would do the job. However, I felt the price was not fixed. I had him come out and quote on some woodwork I need to have done. The trim needs to be finished and there are a couple of pieces of wood that needs to be cut to get on the trim. I need the finished treatment done on the cabinets. I will try to find another service provider. He was very nice. He was very responsive, was on time, and professional. He did what he said he would do. However, I felt that there was a huge variation between $600 and $1200. I was hesitant about taking up the quote. I will consider him in the future if I don’t find anybody else.

The work was good. I really liked the men that they sent out. A better class than the others I have used.

They haven’t given me a quote yet. I am expecting it in the next few days. We also spoke about sound insulation. They would be building a new bathroom and remodeling the old one. They seemed extremely professional. They were very knowledgeable and willing to itemize everything for me which was terrific. They were willing to price everything for me individually so that I could decide how far to go with something that I thought would be nice. They were very helpful. I am very happy with them so far.