Builders Commonwealth

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unknown

Very stressful. Builders Commonwealth had 2+ different supervisors employed during our project. The "+" was seldom here. Two quit during that time period. During much of the time that our home was being built, there was no supervisor. We engaged our architect to assist us with management of the project during construction. Needless to say, there was a great lack of knowledge about the project as each supervisor came onto the job and then left the company. When mistakes were made, (and there were many) it was a battle to get them to take responsibility for them, and assume the cost of correcting them. The manager doesn't use email, so it is tough to document conversations. It usually took several phone calls to get an answer from him. They finished months after the date promised, and over budget. (I had to call the mover 3 times to re-schedule a move-in date.) Their cleaning crew didn't clean construction debris before we moved in. We had to plead for lien wavers with every billing. Even after they were promised, they were often not complete. The day before the basement was poured, we noticed they forgot to put a drain in the laundry room. Now, it isn't sloped, so any nearby standing water needs to be pushed into the drain. There were countless billing errors worth 10's of thousands of dollars. (One $12,000 item was billed three times. Another $30,000 error. Many smaller ones.) They introduced us to and sold us on their top cabinet maker. Instead, they switched us, without consulting with us, to a young man who installed the handles so that they often knick the adjacent doors and wall. Some of the cabinets were dented and cracked when installed. SOme doors don't close flush. Exterior doors took years of adjustments to get them to close properly. When they learned that ceramic tile would take 8 weeks to get, I went online and had it shipped here within the week from other distributors. Ceramic tile was installed in the wrong rooms. The wrong stone was installed on exterior, twice! They moved the location for the air conditioner from where originally agreed. That took a battle to get changed. They failed to follow specs for the support of our deck, even after being told that they were falling short. Three years later we had to have the support structures rebuilt to comply with original specs. There were inches of sawdust, nails, etc. everywhere as we were moving in. After a call from us, the cleaning crew arrived after the movers began moving our things in. For weeks after we moved in the contractors continued to work daily at finishing the project that was already months behind schedule. (Often they had one or two men working, knowing that they were already over the deadline.) One year after we moved in, they had to re-sink hundreds of screws in the sheetrock in nearly every room in the house. The painter who repainted that sheetrock spilled and smeared paint on woodwork and floors. It took two painters a week to repaint and clean up what they painted. The entire exterior had to be repainted because the painter did such a poor job, skipping many places and spilling paint on our stucco and landscaping along the way. We had to take legal action before Builders C. would take responsibility for that project. When they were working in December, they left the door to the garage wide open on weekends after they had left, and we were paying heat bills. After we moved in, and noticed foul smells, we found they built a cabinet over a drain. We have radon levels that are over recommended levels despite having a radon mitigator. To this day, our laundry chute is held together with duct tape that was put on when it was built, there are nails in the woodwork without putty on them, there is paint spilled on our stucco and landscaping. They didn't follow spects, and used the wrong kind of wood trim in the kitchen. We have a shut-off valve for our exterior faucet on the wall of our master bath, instead of the utility room imediately below. Our range hood should have been vented outside, it isn't. Basically, we had to watch every detail, and then fight to correct things that were sloppy or wrong.

The project began on schedule and progressed without interruption until completion. Workmen were clean and respectful of the house while here.

I worked with Thad and he was a pleasure to deal with. Will use them again when our next project happens.

They did a great job. Everything was completed on time. This was about 15 years ago and no problems have came up since. Excellent and recommend to anyone.