CMS Construction Management Services

Went very well. They were able to match almost exactly the 10 year old hardwood in the foyer The work was started and completed in the time originally estimated. I did have a bit of clean up each night because of the wood dust and shavings from cutting (especially when they were working on the floor boards). There were a few marks on the walls when they were done, but my painter anticipated that would happen and his original quote included coming back to do touch up work.

We got quotes just before Memorial Day weekend to redo our master bathroom. It is not a large room. There is a lavatory, a tub, a shower, and a vanity. It is a very basic master bathroom. Kenneth from CMS gave us a fair quote and they were recommended by a company we hired for a different job. CMS started around June 16th. The first day, nobody showed up. The second morning, nobody showed up again. We called Kenneth and left a message. He got back to us and he sent a guy out that afternoon. After that, we asked for an itinerary with a time line so that we would know when to expect someone and when the bathroom should be finished. We were sent an email that estimated the time of completion to be the week after July 4th. Two guys did the demo of the old bathroom and completed that in a few days. After the demo, they sent one guy, just one guy. He was a nice guy, but he worked VERY slowly, and he wouldn't work weekends. We would come home every day to see what had been done that day, and most days you couldn't tell what had been done. He was sent to take care of the plumbing in the floors, build a new shower, cut and lay tile, etc. all within less than a month. There was a problem because when they measured for the shower, they allotted us a certain size for the tub which sits next to it. We ordered a tub, and when it arrived, it did not fit in the space they expected it to. Their measurements were incorrect and the tub ended up being too big. Now, in order for our bathtub to fit, it has to sit at an angle. I'm talking like a 20 degree angle. When the guy started laying the tile on the floor, he started it going in the wrong direction, so he had to pull it up and redo it. Also a different company had to be hired to install the shower door and surrounding glass. When they came to put on the door and the glass, they said the shower walls were done wrong because the angles were incorrect and would not allow water to flow away from the edges of the walls, so CMS had to redo the shower. CMS also had to redo the plumbing for the vanity due to leaking after the initial installation. So CMS continued to send just this one guy until sometime around the start of August when he started calling off work a couple days in a row. At this point, CMS pulled a couple of guys off another job to come finish our bathroom. These guys were much quicker and seemed to be more experienced. That was our perception anyways from speaking with them and seeing the work done. They agreed that CMS never should have sent just one person to do this job for so long. When they started the job, they noticed that the guy who laid the floor tiles before they got there had forgotten to run plumbing up through the floor for the bathtub. He just tiled the whole floor without running pipes up. So they had to pull up more tile and redo that as well. It seemed things kept having to be redone. So now our bathroom is done. It took from June 16 to September 5. It was supposed to be done by mid July. And we aren't even happy with it. We asked for a bench in the shower. In fact, we PAID for a bench. What we got was a ledge. You can't even sit on it. You can set shampoo bottles on it, but even the loufa falls off this bench. Its tiny, and not worth the extra money we paid for it. The bathtub being crooked drives me crazy, and it is like that because of the bad measurements we got at the start. The tile floors seem to have lots of jagged edges, like each one is uneven. The toilet is fine and the sink is fine. The plumbing in the floor is also good. We have no leaks showing in the room below like we used to. We expected better, especially given the amount of time they had to do the job. There also seemed to be a lack of urgency on Kenneth's (the manager) part. It wasn't until the last month of the project that he seemed to respond to emails and phone calls a little more promptly. All in all, we felt like we were the company's last priority. I think the employee they sent in the beginning, the problems with the design and measurements of the bathroom, and the amount of time it took them to complete the job, are all proof of that.

They stayed within the price my insurance company was willing to pay, and the work was excellent. The quality of the materials used is very good. Kenneth Howell was responsive throughout the entire process, and all of the workers were business like, courteous.