Davidson Home Renovation & Landscape

The main reason we chose Brian was his price and availability to start our project almost immediately. Brian gave us the cheapest quote and had availability to start our project two weeks after we first contacted him. Initially, he made a lot of effort to come over to the house and work with us on design, but unfortunately this effort faded as the project started to run into issues. Ultimately, Brian completed the work, but we have three major complaints after working with him: on time performance, quality of work and professionalism. On Time Performance: We hired Brian to complete the project in a quoted period of 4 weeks (on par with quotes from other companies), but the entire project ended up taking 14 weeks driven almost entirely by Brian?s poor time management skills. As the project started to run over time, we could not get a clear answer or time table for when the project would be finished. Brian repeatedly did not show up to the work site and there were many times when we could not reach him by phone, email or text. When we could reach him, he said he suffered from a variety of ?ailments? such as a headache, hurt leg, stomach bug, etc that he would not tell us about proactively. In addition to not showing up at the work site, Brian could not effectively manage the time of his subcontractors We lost 2 weeks due to his scheduling conflicts with the plumbers and 1.5 weeks for the drywallers. After the project concluded, we spoke to the plumbers directly (Huber Plumbing is great!) and they confirmed that they would go days without hearing from Brian. Quality of Work: While the overall quality of the work was average, we ran into minor quality issues during construction as well as a major quality issue that arose after Brian completed the project. Issues during construction: Overall Brian did a nice job on the major areas of the bathroom (i.e. the tile floors, the shower and the framing). Where Brian struggled was on the areas requiring more attention to detail. For example, he installed pocket doors in the master bedroom where the frame does not lie flush against the wall. In another example, he replaced two exterior doors, yet did not do the weather-stripping or finish the trim. When we asked him about these issues, he would take an argumentative tone or say that we were being picky. Specifically, when we asked him to fix the outside doors, he stated that ?installing a door? did not include finishing trim and left the door with large gaps where we could see light coming in the house through the outside of the frame. Brian also denied any problems could arise as a result of the poor installation. To get a second opinion, we had several siding companies come out to give an estimate for repairing the doors and they each stated that leaving the door ?as is? would easily result in water damage to the house. Since they had to tear off the siding, we had to pay $1,000 to correctly install the doors to another contractor after Brian finished. Issue arising later: Our contract included a 12 month warranty on all work performed. One day before the warranty expired, water started leaking from the ceiling underneath the newly installed bathroom. Since we were still under warranty, we called Brian immediately. He agreed to take care of the work, but did not have a sense of urgency for getting over to our house. Given the prior issues with timing, we called his plumbing subcontractors directly and they came out the same day. As they plumbers tore out the ceiling, they discovered the cause of the leak was a nail that Brian put through the newly installed plumbing when he installed the subfloor. While Brian initially agreed to cover the cost of repairs (since they were included in the warranty), he changed his story over the next few weeks. First he agreed to come over to repair the drywall or pay for the entire cost. Then, when we tried to schedule the repair, he got sick several times and couldn?t come by to view the damage (similar to the excuse from the original project). After a week of trying to reach Brian (daily phone calls, daily texts), Brian said he needed to pay for school and would only cover half the costs. Based on our poor prior experience with him, we agreed to this reduced rate rather than have the issue drag on for months. After agreeing, Brian said he would drop off the check the next day. Another week goes by and we do not have the check. We call Brian multiple times again, this time he says the check is in the mail. Another two weeks go by, and we call Brian again, this time he says he will no longer cover the costs as we are our of warranty (going back on his prior agreement and what was included in the contract). At the end of the day, Brian did not cover any of the dry wall work and we had to pay for $600 of drywall work plus $200 for painting directly related to the nail he put through the pipe. Not only did Brian make a huge mistake in installation (that we think should be covered regardless of the warranty period), he also did not honor the warranty included in the original contract for the work. Professionalism: As alluded to above, throughout the entire process Brian lacked a basic level of professionalism. In addition to not responding to phone calls and texts, when problems arose he addressed us with an adversarial demeanor ? sometimes even yelling at my wife. We could not trust him as he repeatedly went back on his word or made up stories about why he did not show up at work. There were several times we showed up in the middle of the day (to check on him) and Brian had not been in the house despite saying he was at the job site. Based on our experience, Brian is not a trustworthy contractor and not worth it to potentially save a few dollars on construction because you will pay more in the long run. Ultimately, we paid over $1,800 more than the original quote due to Brian?s mistakes and lost 10 weeks of time due to the project running over.