Harris Custom Carpentry

Description of Work: Fred Harris has little to no knowledge of the local building codes in Traverse City. When he gave us a bid for our garage project, he stated his price is firm and we would "not need to pay a penny more". After the garage project started and his sub-par work kept failing the city and county inspections, he kept charging us more money. We were stupid and kept paying him what he asked in good faith that he just under bid the work. Fred told us the project would take 3-4 weeks. It ended up taking over 7 months and he never finished the job. It got to the point where Fred would not return my phone calls when I asked when he will return to continue working on the project. Long story short is that Fred eventually ended up walking away from the job without completing the work after we refused to pay extra money for the masonry work to pour the driveway and walk ways. So we ended up with no driveway, no walked ways, no trim around the shed roof joint and 4x4 columns, and no grading/clean up of the area around the garage. We needed to hire someone else to complete the project. | |Furthermore, the quality of the work perform by Harris Custom Carpentry was extremely poor. Just to name a few of the quality issues: 1) There are tons of cracks (several of them wide cracks) in the garage floor because Fred decided to pour the concrete in the middle of winter, 2) we were told the footings would be poured separately from the slab but we instead ended up with an inferior monolithic foundation where the footings and slab are all poured at one time (Fred saved money this way), 3) the garage door opener rail fell off because Fred used short nails instead of long screws to secure the T-Rail to the header (I ended up fixing this myself), 4) the vinyl siding bows in the summer heat because it was installed in the freezing cold winter and not enough spacing was left for heat expansion, 5) several pieces of siding have already fallen off, 6) there are literally hundreds of nails used to secure the OSB sheathing that completely missed the studs which poked through the inside garage creating not only cosmetic issue but also safely concerns (I ended up taking several days to snip off most of the protruding nails in locations posing safety concerns , 7) a terrible job was done with the taping and mudding of one inside wall that was required to be dry-walled due to code, 8) the entry door was not secured properly, 9) so much more... | |Lastly, Fred told us he would be on site whenever work was being performed. He was only present on site for ~50% of the time. | |My experience with Harris Custom Carpentry was absolutely the worst experience of my life.

Description of Work: What has happened: During a complete kitchen renovation, new flooring, drywall installation, all new cabinets, the work that Harris Construction of installing all the cabinets despite poor drywall installation (large surface areas uneven by another contractor), he was able to re-work the cabinets to fit properly. His advice to us was spot on to all other suggestions we are contemplating, but most impressive about Mr. Harris was his professionalism and integrity, something that is sorely missed in this industry. The only concern we had were the bid estimates of other work we are considering seemed high, likely because the work may have to be separately contracted out. But Mr. Harris continues to negotiate fairly and is willing to show us alternative cost to effect the best resolutions possible. Conclusion: I would recommend Harris Construction to bid in the Northern (lower) Michigan area wholeheartedly.