Home Building Solutions

HBS did an extensive remodel to my home several years ago. They did an excellent job! New beautiful kitchen, an enlarged family room with a vaulted ceiling, skylights, and a fireplace. New roof, siding and shutters. The owner, Tom Farr worked hard to make my vision a reality!

Tom and his crew were excellent. They were on time. They were clean and efficient taking care to protect our floor and furnishings. The kept us informed every step of the way. The skylight is beautiful and looks like it was always part of the room. Fantastic job!!!!!! We love it.

The Owner, Tom and his brother-in-law were very unprofessional and provided poor workmanship. Refused to submit a detailed invoice to justify materials and the owner even went so far as to yell at me when I didn't agree with something he was trying to remove from the job. I found an attorney to write a letter on my behalf to protect my interests.

We hired Home Building solutions Owned by Tom Farr in March 2016 in 3.5 months they had still not managed to complete a job which was quoted to take only 8 weeks. Tom only pulled the proper building permits when he found that I had gone to the city and pulled my own permits for some other projects that I was doing on my own even though he charged me for the permits he tried to get away with not paying for them. After 3.5 months of construction where his workers would come to the house for 1-4 hours a day and accomplish almost no work I was finally able to get them to complete the job it took about another 3-4 weeks and lots of persistence phone calls and emails to Tom. The Plumbers that Tom hired are not that great as they could not even pass a simple plumbing inspection, they failed twice before finally passing. Tom convinced me to allow him to hide the plumbing in crown molding since the only other option to run the plumbing was in the attic space. This saved him tons of money I am sure but we paid over 8000 for Plumbing and now we have to listen to the water when we turn on the faucet. I regret letting tom convince me to hide the plumbing in crown molding and wish I had made him do the extra work to put the plumbing in the attic space or in the walls. We paid tom to remove a window and insulate and side the filled in space, however he did not even make this flush with the home so the house looks funny since there is a window size chunks of sided home that is not flush with the rest of the home. Tom likes to hide behind his brother and will not answer phone calls unless he is having trouble getting money from you then he will call back. He does not respond to emails or text messages either. If you are considering hiring Home Building Solutions I recommend that you look for another company as you will end up paying them lots of money and only be disappointed. In addition to all the pain that Tom caused with trying to get our home finished so we could live in our home instead of a construction zone. We posted our reviews on Facebook, Google, Homeadvisor, and other review sites. All of those pages where we left our reviews have been deleted and the reviews no longer visible to the public. Home Building Solutions has several Facebook pages and any Honest negative reviews are hidden because Home Building Solutions will delete the Facebook page. #buyerbeware #dishonest

Both jobs came out well in the end. The master bath is beautiful, and Tom did a great design job, figuring out how to maximize storage and utilize space in a small bathroom. His carpenter, Eric, was a perfectionist and did a great job. We did, however, have some problems along the way. The custom cabinetry was built incorrectly and had to be reordered, and this threw us out of HBS's schedule and caused the job to drag on for months. Some of the sub-contractors were not great, especially the plumber. The new powder room sink leaked under the vanity, the shower doors and door handles were installed backwards, the wrong shower head and faucets were installed and had to be swapped out for the ones we ordered, etc. That said, Tom did address the punch list and everything was eventually done to our satisfaction. One big benefit to using HBS is that they have a nice showroom in Farmington, so the customer can choose all of the materials and color palettes without running around to different vendors. Not a perfect experience, but a good outcome.

Preface: I want to apologize to my fellow Angie's List members for not posting this sooner...I have no excuse. I hope nobody had a similar bad experience since our job officially finished over a year ago. ******************************************************************************************* Contractor Mr. TF said that we would have our perfect bathroom in three weeks. We needed it done before my wife's parents arrived to stay with us for two weeks. Too bad he didn't deliver, not even close. We paid a professional price for a job with way too many critical, amateur errors. Renovation started on time but the demo task turned out to be unexpectedly difficult, reasonably so with the type of walls to be removed, so a different demo crew showed up and cost increase negotiated. The two man crew showed up under the supervision of a Mr. BS. The crew had completely inadequate tools or safety equipment, I loaned mine because I wanted progress. They also used my shop vac to clean up (didn't bother to clean the shop vac). They did eventually land on some of their own gear. But, despite repeated pleas with TF to keep it clean, the crew made a dust-bowl proportion mess in our basement (removed the floor tiles before removing the concrete-like plaster walls...the dust and debris fell freely between the floor-board gaps into my unfinished basement). It was a disaster, and cleanup was totally incomplete. (except for my lighting fixture which the crew helped themselves to) Demolition done, cabinetry, electrical and plumbing rough-in began. Carpentry and electrical went well but the plumbing was not OK. The contract stipulated new copper, and Mr. BS installed new flex. (and in a sloppy way, running them below the joists when he could have run them in between) Mr. BS roughed in the toilet, sink and bath drains. Mr. BS installed the new bath tub, and tub-wall was prepped with concrete board by another of TFs crew. Also installed new window. Tub was supposed to be filled with water and then foamed into position...Mr. BS didn't want to wait that long, so he didn't bother. After I insisted, he finally came back and did a very sloppy job of setting the tub. Dry-wallers came next and finished in two days, including replicating the cove-ceiling there previously, and did a very good job; high quality and good pace. The ceramic tile work was next, all-in-all good technical work, but they pulled from too few tile templates for the floors and the walls..the replicated patterns just don't look that great to me, but overall good job, good finish and good pace. Mr. BS roughed in the electrical/lighting fixtures. The canister lights above the sink had holes that were cut too large, so the lights were tending to slop down away from the ceiling. The sink and cabinetry were installed next.....oops, bad layout, the main tall cabinet was not fitting, and had to be taken back and re-fitted...that burned some time. When the replacement arrive, it fit, but the door and shelf plan were not what we had included in the design. Fit and finish looked good though. The toilet was installed next by Mr. BS, special-order solid-form that my wife wanted, oops, Mr. BS tried to do the job alone and bludgeoned the new dry-walled corner AND cracked the toilet while moving it into position. Mr. TF scrambled to get a replacement and succeeded the next day, kudos. Toilet was installed by Mr. BS, topped off with a sloppy silicon sealing job. Personal note: Mr. BS took the liberty of literally soiling our other toilet EACH DAY that he came to our house, thanks a lot!. -End of first three weeks- her folks come to stay with us, bathroom was technically useable. The rest of the finish ( mirror with frame, floor and cabinetry trim, "fixing" the leaking toilet drain which 'erupted' twice into my basement laundry room, took Mr. TF and crew NEARLY A FULL YEAR and only after repeated calls, voicemails and visits to his office to remind him that I was still an unhappy customer. Finally, I made the last payment. Shortly thereafter I had discovered a smell of sewage gas in the bathroom, and hired a proper plumber through Angie's List, who indicated that the toilet was roughed in incorrectly with-respect-to the tile, and was not making a permanent seal to the pipes. An additional wax-ring was positioned and the toilet was re-installed. Mr. TF covered this expense. Grout around the window (in the shower) cracked within one year, as was the caulking around the window. I did not have time to play phone-tag with Mr. TF so I fixed it myself. Same with the faucet seal to the counter-top AND the improperly installed faucet handle...both originally installed by Mr BS. Also, the finish on the cabinets is slowly flaking off. The areas flaking away are not due to wear and tear. Finally, the hardware for the tub was installed incorrectly (installed by Mr. BS BEFORE properly setting the tub) and now the overflow valve does not seal to the tub...showing a quarter-inch gap which lets bathwater leak freely into my basement when the water level is high enough, or when my four-year-old splashes. To add insult to injury, there is no access panel to service/reinstall the tub hardware. Mr. TF wouldn't return calls on this one, so I guess it's on me. ( have to cut a hole in newly finished tile in the adjacent bathroom wall to make an access panel) Any suggestions for a good carpenter in this area? All in all, this bathroom renovation was not a good value and took, and is still taking, way too much of my time and money to manage. And, it occurs to me that if Mr TF had used a professional, instead of Mr. BS, to do much of the work, it might be a very different story as would this review!

They rarely showed up when they said they would. It took months to finish the job & it looks terrible.

This job went well and we are happy with our new room. The company does a good job of estimating and gives you a lot of info. They also carry all recommended insurance. Work is done by sub-contractors. For the most part people are easy to work with. We never felt ill at ease having them in the house. They took very good care of the carpet which we wanted to save. We also had them install Pella windows we bought at Lowe's which is better than doing it yourself because they must be installed just so or you void the warranty. We did have an issue when a pipe in our baseboard hot water heating system leaked after reinstall. Their subcontractor came in and fixed the problem but it was not until we received the final bill that we were aware that we were being charged for all the work. Home Building Solutions thought that this had been made clear to us by the subcontractor. In the end we were able to split the cost which we felt was fair because the leak was a caused by a combination of poor handling and the age and condition of the system before work started. During the project, I let them throw away the old doors. Hubby was not happy about that. After job completion, HBS brought over a door for my husband from another job that didn't swing right for that application.