High Meadow Builders LLC

If you are looking for a PROFESSIONAL contractor that offers a QUALITY product this is the company for you! The customer service provided by High Meadow Builders during replacing my roof or more recently replacing the two bedroom windows. They were fast, neat (really important) and appeared to know what they are doing. The roof was done a few years back and we have had no problems with it. The windows were done only a week or so ago and through a major rain storm there were no concerns at all. They have done other work in the past that have had no problems over the last 5+ years.

I like Don and Phil. They were generally responsive and good to work with, but the work itself was not up to the quality I expected, mostly by lack of attention to detail. I don't think they knew how to work with Trex decking, and the boards have been warping and rising since the installation. They don't seem to have used the clip system properly so they used screws for the warped areas, which is not attractive. There are also pieces of Trex that were cut way to thin and look bad, which was just poor planning. There are pieces of wood used on the deck rail that clearly should have been rejected due to significant defects like large black craters in the wood. There are screws on the deck rail that completely missed the underlying wood. For a year or two they would come and fix things, but Don retired and the company is now owned by Phil. Phil was on the deck crew but he won't warranty the work anymore. That is a big reason for the low rating. Nobody I've asked about this thinks it's the right thing to do. As far as the porch lift job, that seems to have gone well but again, attention to detail was lacking. Doors that should have closed smoothly once the porch was lifted, still are a struggle to open and close. They accidentally knocked down the rock wall around my wellhead, and they piled them back up, but they quickly came down again after having been stable for many years before they backed a truck into it. To be fair, they built the deck at the beginning of winter, and it was cold. I felt bad for the workers, but the work still should have been done properly.

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It never happened

We had bought a used kitchen including appliances and countertops from a charity and were looking to install it. We spoke with several contractors who all seemed capable of doing the work but settled on High Meadow Builders because Don seemed to listen to our needs the best, seemed to want to work with us to control costs, and was going to be closest to his estimate. On all three accounts High Meadow exceeded our expectations. We were happy to try and do as much of the work ourselves as possible to help control costs, but neither my husband or I had the technical skills to do the installation. Because the kitchen was custom made for the original owners there were a lot of things that needed to be modified to work in our kitchen. We did the demolition ourselves, dealt with the counter top people to avoid the markup, and purchased a lot of the materials like the tile floor for the mudroom, the vanity, and the toilet to control costs. Initially, we had planned a much simpler renovation but after starting to speak with contractors we decided to replace the floors and do the bathroom as well. The larger price tag for the project was due to this and not High Meadow marking things up. Don was very receptive to our changes and helped us make decisions. With the exception of the subcontractors our final bill was identical to our final estimate that we signed. The estimate we received also was at about the same price point as the other GC's that we got estimates from. Day-to-day Don or his partner Phil would stop by and check on the work that was being done, but at the job site their carpenter Jared ran things. As is often the case you are only as good as the people you employ and Jared did an awesome job. Either my husband or I was home for the majority of the work being done and there were always things that needed to be addressed because the kitchen was not originally meant for this space. Each time Jared would present the options we had and was very patient as we peered in multiple times a day to be updated on the progress. Both the electrical and plumbing bill were much higher than expected, but this was due to several things that I don't blame Don for. 1) the scope of work increased dramatically from when we initially spoke and we never asked for an updated idea of what the subs costs would be at the time we signed the contract for the work. 2) The electrical work became much more difficult because the house is old and many of the switches we needed to move were on three ways in other rooms with very little extra line, so it was necessary to run entirely new lines from the breaker. 3) The plumbing work increased with the scope of work as well. Morgan Electric was the electric sub and although expensive Bob and Kevin were awesome. We would absolutely use them again. The Plumber was Kevin Fahey (Spelling?) was the plumber. He needed to come back and fix almost everything he touched. This could be partially due to the house being old (1950's), but definitely not entirely due to that. Overall his attitude did not impress us and he was still pretty expensive, so we would definitely not use him again. We did not include our negative feeling toward the plumber in our rating, but if we had, we would give a B overall. In the end the sub's were way over what was initially budgetted and the cabinets needed to be painted instead of touched up due to their condition. Don ended up not charging us more to paint the cabinets and he passed along the sub's bills for us to pay directly and he did not mark them up the usual 10% which we thought was more than fair. He didn't need to do either of these things and I think he was just trying to make up for his subs coming in way over. All in all, the final product looks great under challenging circumstances. All of the staff was friendly and interacted with our dog well, and we think what we were charged was more than fair.

Let me start out by saying I am a do-it yourself kind of guy. We decided to contract out these bathroom projects because I am working long hours now and just do not have the time. We had just finished a DIY kitchen remodel that took about a year until all the trim and finish work was completed.Let me just say in my own defense the cabinets and appliances were installed and the kitchen was functional within a couple of months - just took forever to get to the details done once the kitchen was usable. My expectations for these bathrooms was that the quality would be better than I could do myself as I am admittedly not a professional. The first signs of potential problems was when Don Collins showed up the day the project was to start and his "staff" was a local handyman. The second red flag that day was when I asked Don how much additional it would cost to have all the plumbing redone with Pex Tubing. Don told me his plumber didn't work with Pex tubing. Obviously we would not be working with tradesman who keep current with their trade. The rough work and carpentry were acceptable. I was concerned about the amount of time the plumber was on site and asked about how we were doing on the plumbing costs. I was told it would cost about $400 additional to put in plumbing for the washer and additinally they were about 10% over the estimate we were given (which was ~$2500 for plumbing). OK ~$3200 now for plumbing. I had thought about having the water heater moved closer to the bathrooms and that cost was estimated by the plumber to be ~$400, but with the other additional plumbing costs decided that would have to wait. The quality of the finish work is variable. I was not happy to come home one evening to find the trim installed in the basement bathroom without being stained. This is a basement (cool, damp floor) bathroom (wet floor) with bare wood trim sitting on the floor. How long will that last? The miters on the trim work were far below expectations. There was not a tight miter in the bathroom. I pointed this out to Philip the next morning and he assured me it would be fixed. After talking with Philip I went upstairs to the sound of an electric sander and found drywall dust flying everywhere. The local handyman (previously mentioned) was sanding the drywall with an electric sander. I stood in the hallway in total disbelief at the dust flying throughout the house. A professional would not use an electric sander on dyrwall, it roughs up the paper too much and does not make for a nice finish. At least Philip instructed the handyman to hang the bathroom door and close it before he continued on with the electric sander. By the way no effort was made to clean up the mess throughout the house and no credit issued on the bill to compensate us for all the clean up we had to do. The "fix" to the poorly done miters was to fill the gaps with putty, again, not professional in my opinion. Part of the upstairs bath remodel involved closing in a window. The job that was done on the siding was laughable. If the siding on our house is double 5, they stuck up double 4, didn't fill in the area completely (leaving bare wood exposed), and what they did do was falling off before a week had passed. I emailed Don and he agreed the job was not acceptable - no explanation as to why it was done that way in the first place. They did come back and redo the siding correctly and it looks good but I have not gotten a good explanation for what was done the first time. The final insult came when we were presented with a bill for $5000 for the plumbing. Yes, the same plumbing bill we were told was going to be ~$3200. We had changed nothing since the updated estimate and had not been informed of any unforseen problems encountered by the plumber. Additionally Don told us they he was disputing 11 hours of labor charged by the plumber contractor that Don's crew could not verify and that the plumber on our job agreed was not worked. This would have made the bill closer to $6000. Bottom line evaluation of High Meadow Builders: they cannot acccurately estimate a job, they do not subcontract skilled craftsman, they do not supervise their workman, they do not work with quality tradesman, and they do not manage the project to contain costs and avoid problems.

If you are looking for a PROFESSIONAL contractor that offers a QUALITY product this is the company for you! The customer service provided by High Meadow Builders during the remodel was outstanding. The crew was always on time and took care to protect the area around the work site from damage. The quality and skill of their work is AMAZING. The contractor handled the whole project, all we had to do was pick the finishes. The project was completed on time and on budget.