Rochester Contracting Network

Great job!

I give them an overall rating of an A and their pricing was reasonable.

The original state of the townhouse was 25 years of neglect, including original carpeting and paint, all in a color palette I describe as Cardboard Box. I was referred to Rochester Contracting Network through a chain of referrals for painters and decorators, but I had never worked with RCN before, and came into the project completely clueless. I scheduled a meeting with RCN to get an estimate on the project. I had gotten a couple of individual estimates for painting, flooring, and electrical work, but I was interested in working with as few different companies as I could to limit finger-pointing if things went wrong. At the meeting, I met Tony and Danise (not spelled wrong) Ciaccia (probably not spelled wrong), the owners. Tony was the contractor and Danise the decorator (although both wore multiple hats through the project). The three of us walked through the house, with Tony taking pictures and both asking questions about what I wanted. This was the hardest part, because I couldn't really describe what I wanted beyond 1) something I can resell in 5-10 years, 2) something colorful, and 3) something "cheerful and relaxing". I had talked to a decorator earlier, and we had talked about some paint colors and a couple decor ideas (turning my dining room into a library being the biggest change). Tony and Danise were very receptive to my ideas, and provided a lot of valuable guidance in areas I no expertise in (basically, all areas). Tony took the notes and pictures from the walkthrough and provided me with an estimate. And by estimate, I mean an 11-page, 130-item bullet list room by room of every material and labor cost, from removing the old carpeting down to the cost of the knobs for the bathroom cabinets. The initial estimate came in at about $23,800. Since I had budgeted $25,000 for the job using the scientific method of 25 years x $1000, his estimate was acceptable to me, and we agreed to a start date (subject to completion of his current job and my preparations for the house to be under construction). His estimate was 4-5 weeks. My mental estimate was 6-8 weeks. The weekend before the work started, Tony, Danise and I met at Lowe's to pick out all the fixtures. We revisited the paint colors, and tweaked the choices I had made with the first decorator (the blue I had picked for the living room turned gray in certain lighting). With all the fixtures selected, we selected the carpet and vinyl flooring, and tried to match the color I had in mind for the laminate flooring. It took a while, but we found one that would do. Tony and his crew showed up bright and early at 8:00AM on the first day. I was planning to work from home for the duration, so the project logistics required that I always have a place to work from (either my office or the living room), a place to sleep, and a functional bathroom. They started with the bedroom and master bath upstairs, and the kitchen and powder room downstairs. A couple items got added to the original project along the way (painting the kitchen, replacing the bannister and rear porch light). As we went along, Tony and I planned out the order of activities in order to allow me to occasionally go into the office, and still live in the house while it was under construction, without interrupting their flow of work. Danise helped out with choosing the furniture and rugs for the library and living room, including one morning spent at Home Comforts trying to coordinate wall paint with accent paint with furniture fabric colors with a painting in the living room. All the work was done by Tony and his "network" of employees and sub-contractors. To a man, everyone was friendly, professional and competent. Either Tony or Danise was present to supervise and/or field questions at all times. The workers cleaned up at the end of each day, and always left the house livable over the weekends. By my recollection, there were never fewer than two people working, usually three, and at times up to five, all doing their separate tasks together or in parallel. The workers were always on time. The payment schedule we agreed to was $10,000 up front, another $7,000 at the halfway mark, and the balance on completion. By the time we got halfway done, I had no concerns about the quality of the work done, or the commitment to complete the project. The work, which was scheduled for 4-5 weeks, was completed in 3 1/2 weeks, even given the extra tasks, and a suspicious "hump" in the living room floor which had to be smoothed out before the laminate flooring could be installed. Danise and I walked through the house twice with a punch list of touch-up work (mostly fixing drywall irregularities highlighted by the new paint and caulking). The final bill came to $25,083, with the difference from the estimate consisting only of the extra items I had requested (and those were itemized out in the same bill format as the original estimate). Tony and Danise are wonderful people who are genuinely interested in doing the job right and satsfying the customer (even when the customer doesn't know what he wants). I can't recommend them and RCN highly enough. I would use them again in a heartbeat, if they had not already done everything I needed! :)