Frank Larrabee Construction

About a year later, cracks started to appear in the tile floor. Without going into all the extended details, it turns out that he did not take the recommendation of the engineer who stipulated the necessary steps required to build so that little if any settling would occur. We obtained a copy of this report and have had professional engineers review it and the property confirming Larrabee did not follow the recommendations. After four years, we finally had to install helical piers under part of the house to prevent further settling. The foundation is cracked and one corner of the house is about 3 inches lower than the main portion of the house. Of course, this created many other problems - doors and windows not opening or closing, more cracking of tiles, shower not draining properly, etc. Roughly speaking, we have had to spend an additional 25,000 (and counting) to fix or repair the effects of the settling, and additional shortcuts he took (i.e. roof leaks).

He charged very little because we bought all the material and the tiles. He just charged us for the labor. He stands for his work. The tile cracked and he stood by his workmanship and fixed it.

The work began on schedule, relocating some trees & bushes, preparing the ground and pouring the concrete slab. The builder then invited us to join in as he and the framers chalked out the door, window & interior wall placements. That proved to be very effective, as we found some nice "tweaks" that improved the usefulness of the new space and it demonstrated the builder's commitment to making sure that we were happy with the end result. His framing crew was experienced-- they had been working for him for years-- and one or the other of them were typically on site overseeing things whenever subcontractors were used on the job. Interior finish, stucco, lighting, finishing details-- they all came out very nicely, matching the existing house and making the final result look as if it had always been there. The builder spoke with us briefly nearly every morning to let us know what was happening that day and to listen to any questions, concerns or requests that we had at that time. He was very open to having us tweak things that were still tweakable (we tried not to abuse this, clearly) and more than once he came up with ideas that were improvements upon what we had been thinking. The crews did a good job of cleaning up the construction trash at the end of the day. When the job was done, they raked and leveled the ground so we pretty much didn't need to worry about any of that. The end result was better than we hoped for-- the new rooms look great, the cost was completely on budget and the schedule, while it missed by a few days, was closer than I would have guessed given a job of this size.