CASE HANDYMAN & REMODELING

In March 2015, the California Air Resources Board decreed that if you wanted to sell your home, you need to remove your wood burning fireplace. Sounded good to me since I’d wanted to get rid of that dinosaur for many years. I hired Case to remove my fireplace. They had done a couple of previous “handy man” type jobs that I was pleased with but they are also a remodeling company. I anticipated this job might require extra skills so they seemed like a good choice. I called in June to set up an appointment for an estimate and was told it would be 4 -6 weeks before they could send anyone out to look at my job. In July, they came by to assess the job and I was told I would receive an estimate in a couple of weeks. The numbers looked ok so I signed the contract. At this point it had been 2 months since my initial contact. They planned to start in 2 weeks but that was delayed several times. Finally, they started just before Labor Day. During the demolition they determined that the (insert invective here) guy that built my home used the fireplace surround as part of the support structure. So, now I had a big hole that needed to be filled with … another fireplace. The suggested California Window and Fireplace. See related reviews at Cal Fire and Canyon Fireplace. While I was waiting to the new fireplace to be delivered, the Air Board reversed themselves. So I give the Air Board a great big D for performance. The fireplace was finally delivered in mid-October. Cal Fire refused to plumb the gas line and refused to replace the storm cap on the roof. Case took care of the gas line and said they would take care of the storm cap. Note: the storm cap was not part of the original bid so they had some wiggle room. Weeks and months went by and they just couldn’t get it done. I hired them because I anticipated there might be issues that would require their expertise. In January, I hired Canyon Fireplace to take care of the storm cap. It’s interesting that Case kept dunning me for payment even though they had not performed a final walk through. At long last, this job was completed in February. In summary, Case did a decent job on the routine items: dry wall, electrical, etc but I think anybody could’ve done that. The turnaround was slower than I expected and they really fumbled the ball on the storm cap.