MARTIN CONSTRUCTION

This is a review of both Martin Construction of Wellesley, MA and New England Home Additions of Plymouth, MA. The two firms are related by blood: the former is run by William Martin, while the latter is run by his son, also named William Martin. They may or may not be legally related firms. My brother and I came across the Martins from "B", who provided a review of Martin Construction to Angie's List on April 22, 2013. "B" is someone we have known personally for more than 20 years, and he told us a Bill Martin was doing the work on his parents' house. His review of the work was lukewarm: he said the work was ok, but the price kept escalating above what was agreed upon, and also that Martin kept trying to push him to do stuff beyond what "B" was looking to do. Despite the lukewarm reference, we ended up going with William Martin anyway, and here began the confusion. Both William Martin the father and William Martin the son came to look at the property and discuss the work. They both came several times. When we signed the contract we thought we were getting the same contractor that had done the work on "B"'s property, but it isn't clear that was the case. The sign they planted in the lawn read "Martin Construction," and it was the father that we originally contacted, but the contract was with "New England Home Additions." As noted above, this may or may not be the same legal entity as "Martin Construction," but we certainly had no idea that we were contracting with anyone other than the person who had done work on "B"'s house. As noted before, both father and son have the same name, and both were there to discuss the deal. Only 2 months later, while talking with "B", did I realize that it was the father that had done the work on his house. But as it turned out, William Martin the son was the one running our project, and hiring him to do that was a catastrophic mistake. We contracted to have the kitchen and a half-bathroom redone, some work on the basement performed, some painting and floor refinishing, and other tasks. Will told us that the work would be done in three weeks; he emphasized he had a "big job" waiting, so he had to finish quickly (of course, this proved to be untrue). Well, more than 3 months later, the job is still not finished, and we would not even be as far along as we are if my brother and i had not taken over the project management from Will, who proved completely incapable of managing this job. One reason Will said the job would be done in 3 weeks was because he had a full crew at his disposal But as we found out, the truth was that Will's "big crew" consisted of only Will, his elderly uncle who did some painting, and his father who showed up every now and then and did a little painting. The carpenter, plumber, electrician, and floor guys were all subcontractors, all of whom we eventually needed to personally schedule (more on that later). Amusingly, Will said that his need to pay workman's comp to his crew and the cost of maintaining his office was one reason why he always needed money from us. That is comic, because it is unlikely Will has an office that is any different from his personal residence, and also unlikely that "New England Home Additions" has any employees other than Will himself. Delays in contracting are not uncommon, but in our case the delay is more than 3 times the estimate (and counting), and worse, it has required us to become the general contractor -- what we were paying Will to do. To be clear, we paid more than 80% of the contract after a month had elapsed, and the work was nowhere close to 80% done. With a standup guy that might be OK, but with money in hand Will's work on the project slowed to a trickle. He personally rarely arrived at the house before 10:30 or 11:00am, nor did he work late. Some days he simply did not show at all. As noted, he also seemed incapable of actually managing the project. We hired a general contractor specifically because we did not want to oversee every phase of things and personally arrange for the workers and supervise them. But that is exactly what happened, despite our having paid Will. When Will could not get it together to get the floor guys in, we made it happen by personally calling and scheduling them. When Will could not arrange for wood for the floors we made that happen. When Will could not get around to scheduling the plumber and electrician we made that happen. When Will's carpenter walked off the job to do another job (he said he would only come on days it was raining because he took a job to build a deck), we had to scramble to find someone to assemble the Ikea cabinets and install them (probably a blessing, in one sense, because it did not seem like Will and the carpenter knew how to assemble Ikea cabinets, despite Will's claim that he had installed "many" Ikea kitchens). And so on. We spent days and days and days cleaning up the mess that Will and his guys left everywhere -- something a good contractor would do as a normal part of the job. Not only did we have to manage the project, we often had to pay the people we brought in out of our own pockets. To be clear, we were now paying out of our own pocket for work that *was part of the contract and which we had already mostly paid Will for*. We paid for new cabiinet guys. We paid for additional carpentry. We paid to have the dumpster removed. And so on. Will took our money and then essentially left us to actually get the project done, which required extensive time and labor from us and significant additonal expenditures from us. All of this is bad, but it was made much worse by the fact that our elderly and frail parents returned to a house that was not done. When they came back the kitchen had no cabinets or running water and the bathroom on that floor had been gutted but not put back together. My parents were forced to use a bedroom as a makeshift kitchen (by using a microwave and toaster oven and mini-refrigerator) and a bathroom sink for dish washing. They are still using that setup because the work is still not done...3 months after the start. As bad as that is, if my brother and I had not finally realized that Will would never get the work done and had not taken control of things, the situation would be far worse. We very strongly discourage everyone from using Will Martin for anything. The son lay down on the job, after taking our money, leaving us in a dire situation. And the father stuck us with his son.

The work was fine in the end, but as the job progressed the costs continued to add up, beyond the original quote.