Quality Calvary Construction, LLC

The siding was done so incredibly poorly that in the end, at my request QCC agreed to remove all charges associated with siding from the final invoice. The reveals were as much as an inch off, the corners did not line up, their cuts (notching around windows, etc.) were crude, they damaged the edges of boards and used them anyway, and their caulking was beyond sloppy. When the second QCC owner, Larry Little, finally showed up at our job site/home to inspect, he found and noted numerous issues with the work his employees had done, and was appropriately embarrassed by their completely unprofessional and poor quality work (all the taped on notes in the pictures are from Larry, and they stretched across all three walls). It is hard to believe that the siding after being installed so poorly was even painted — that means that the siding had passed its initial quality inspection and was approved to move to the next step. Or, it means that no one was doing any quality control at all. Either way, it speaks to the lack of integrity Quality Calvary Construction demonstrated. Larry offered to pull the boards off and reattach them with proper spacing, replacing the boards with the worst cuts. My research indicated that with brittle cement fiber boards (Hardiplank), the act of prying them off would undermine the structural integrity, and that ‘method’ was not acceptable. Removing and reattaching would also constitute a non-standard installation practice, and would void any manufacturers warrantee. It’s hard for me to believe that they even suggested that as a viable “solution”, which would have effectively left us with used damaged materials when we were paying for new properly installed siding.

They used studs in some cases that were better suited for firewood. Their walls were never checked for plumb (or were checked, and they couldn’t figure out how to keep them square), and even with just my 2’ level they are off by as much as 1/4” in two feet, which translates to around an inch floor to ceiling. When attaching the new roof to the old, the rafter cuts were made so poorly that the new rafters float over the old roof, you can actually see as much as an inch gap between them. They are held in suspension by nails, which Glen assured me are ‘good enough’ to hold it together. I guess time will tell. At one point they attached a 4x12 header directly to the 115 year old sheathing of the original house without any support underneath it. This was something even I as a non-professional could see was just not right. It was later removed as entirely unnecessary, but that it was installed so poorly, and that it was installed unnecessarily, both illustrate the lack of planning and project oversight that was ubiquitous on this addition. Glen through lack of experience, research, or just being out of touch with current trends, underestimated the time it would take to have the architectural trusses for the roof made, and threw the whole job off by almost two months. He then said he’d “stick build” the roof himself, but found out that his design would need to go through an engineer and be approved by the city, and subsequently chose not to do that. This is one of many clear examples of how this job was done without sufficient planning, experience, or competence.

Because of poor planning and a lack of management experience, they were unable to meet their promised and very reasonable schedule and get the addition weathered in before the rain and wind of fall came, and as a result they were unable to finish painting the exterior, leaving parts of the exterior exposed and unprotected for the entire wet winter. They also painted on windy days, getting over-spay on our adjacent chain link fence, across brand new windows, on outdoor furnishings, and on areas of the main house. In as much as caulking is a part of painting, their caulking was completely unskilled. As horrified as I was to see how sloppy it was, it was unbelievable when no one came through to correct the mess, and instead they painted right over it. They appear to think themselves accomplished and professional painters, but that was not my experience of their work. The work was not done well, and as with most of the other work they did, there was no quality control on site.

The original contract called for the drywall to be sub-contracted out to specialists. I could speculate as to why, but for whatever reason they decided to have their crew do the work. This was one of the most time consuming and painful parts of the process to watch, it is difficult for me to find words to express how cruel it was to leave these crew members in over their heads for weeks struggling without any help from someone knowledgeable. They would attempt to mud, and then call ME in to inspect the work, as if the home owner was their quality control supervisor. They were desperately trying to get it “good enough”, so that they could move on. At one point after they had primed, textured, and painted — an actual supervisor, Larry, finally showed up — saw how horrible the work was and made them sand down sections and re-mud and start over. They were already way over schedule at this point and this completely inept crew continued to stumble its way through attempting to finish the job, under-trained and under-supervised. At one point Larry told me he thought it was important that his employee keep doing it over until he got it right so that he would learn… at whose expense?! Glen and Larry can try to blame their workers, but no one was onsite supervising, and that is completely on them. Currently as I look at the “finished” walls, there are countless obvious sub-standard imperfections on every surface, but I was not going to drag this project out for additional weeks while they try and get their crew up to professional levels. At some point you have to cut your losses and move on, which is why I asked them to stop working and leave, having seen their crew repeatedly demonstrate that they did not possess the skills to get it right.

General Overview We can not give a complete and comprehensive review of Quality Calvary Construction, LLC, in the allotted space on this website. The list of things that were done unprofessionally, not as promised, or simply incompetently is far too long, and the multitude of pictures I have supporting my statements will not fit here. I will do my best to give simple specific examples of several of the types of issues we had with their work, broken down by category (siding, roofing, drywall, etc.) in separate reviews. Some of the examples in isolation may seem random or small, but considering how pervasive their low quality work was, and the fact that this project unnecessarily stretched out over 7 months, it adds up to irrefutable patterns of incompetence, poor planning, inexperience, lack of management, and bad business practices. As has been my experience with Larry Little, I expect that he will come here and argue with everything I say, and I won’t have an opportunity to reply. If he worked as hard to get things right the first time as he does to deal with his mistakes, I would not be giving this negative review. Ironically, while Larry will try and mop up the mess, it was the other partner, Glen Moore, who is responsible for most of what went wrong with our project. Sadly, there simply is no excuse for the sub-standard work Quality Calvary Construction (QCC) did, and no matter how many times Larry was willing to come back and try and fix things, their crew had not demonstrated the ability to do professional level work. Professionalism doesn’t always mean getting it right the first time, but it is reasonable to expect that once an error has been made it will be caught by the company’s quality control in a timely fashion and promptly corrected. That would require that there actually be quality control, worker supervision, and overall integrity, all things lacking in our experience with QCC. Well into winter when they were months over the scheduled project time, we had enough with their incompetence and just wanted them gone, so I told them to stop before they had a chance to fix all of their mistakes and finish the loose ends that should have been done months before. To be clear, had each step of the project gone smoothly and the work been done to professional standards, I would have taken the extra time in stride. But when it took extra time because of lack of planning, and poorly trained and unsupervised workers making pathetic mistakes (often repeatedly), that was unacceptable. We had checked out their CCB status and BBB rating, and all of the online reviews as well as their professional references, and there were no red flags. We were stretching ourselves financially to have this project done, and rolled the dice going against all common wisdom by going with “the lowest bidder” because it turned out that was all we could afford. What that meant in practical terms was that from the moment the initial deposit was paid, there was not enough money left in our account to fire them and hire someone else to finish the job. We were immediately stuck with them, for better or worse, the best that they could do would be what we had to live with. Perhaps you can learn from our mistake. 1. Communication, work practices and ethics The Partner in charge of this project, Glen Moore, randomly and infrequently responded to email, texts, or phone calls. When I was able to get his attention, it was impossible to get a straight answer out of him even after asking him the same simple question repeatedly. When he did talk he was a non-stop stream of excuses and deflections, or reasons why what he did was “good enough”. I’m in my mid-50’s, owned several houses and worked with dozens of contractors over the years — my experience of working with Glen was that he is the most frustrating, incompetent, and unprofessional contractor I have ever worked with. Their work apparently is “up to code”, and we passed all of our inspections (which is actually an indication that the inspection system is broken, but that’s another topic…). All that means is that they used the required dimensional lumber at the required spacing, and the required number of nails, etc. It says nothing about actual quality, aesthetics, or craftsmanship. Their sloppiness ranged from using sub-standard lumber, to not checking that their walls were plumb. “Up to code” does not check their poor work ethic, lack of pride in their work, or low skill level. Their lack of pride was evident on a daily basis in the way they trashed the workspace and our surrounding property consistently, and even left it strewn with trash over the weekends (all pictures were taken after they left for the day). 2. Timing, delivery, organization We signed the contract for a $58,200 addition to be added to our house. The contract estimates the project would take 90 days, and my primary request from the outset was that the house be “weathered in” before the fall rains started. 90 days would have had the entire job done by the end of August, all I asked was that the exterior shell be done by then. Throughout the first months of the project they repeatedly assured me we were on schedule to meet my requirement, in the end they were not even close. We signed the contract on 5/31/18, the foundation was poured on 7/18/18, and it wasn’t until 9/21/18 that the roof was finally on. This had ramifications, as the house was not completely painted before the rains prevented it from being finished, and the sub-floors were repeatedly soaked with rain causing them to be uneven under the hardwood floor that was later installed. Although their project estimate in the contract was 90 days to completion, it was after 226 days that I told them to stop working — even though the work was not complete and there still were unresolved issues. This was a project that if it were well planned and well managed would have easily been done to high standards of professionalism in 4-5 months, that instead was done poorly not even to completion by this company after over 7 months. If the project had taken 7 months, but every time they showed it was as promised, and the work they did was done once and done right, I would give them a great rating. But this job did not take so long because they were taking their time to get it right, or for any other good reason. It was because the project manager appeared to have no plan, rarely showed up on site, and was completely out of touch with current industry lead times. It was because incompetent undertrained workers were here unsupervised, and spent as much time fixing mistakes as moving the project forward. 3. Oversight, project management, crew training I’m OK with the fact that I watched crew members getting lessons on how to use a nail gun at the beginning of the project. What I’m not OK with is that their supervisor repeatedly and consistently left the premises leaving them inadequately trained and unsupervised (illustrated by the fact that they did not initially pass the nailing portion of the city inspection). The one more-experienced crew member onsite was stretched way beyond his skill or knowledge level, and ended out spending weeks without any supervision or instruction, struggling with siding, drywall, and hardwood flooring that were way outside of his competence level. It was exhausting and painful to watch, and the finished product is not up to professional standards. There were so many examples of poor planning and lack of an understanding of project management that I can’t list them all. Probably the biggest scheduling screw up was Glen’s lack of experience, knowledge, or research — one or more of which led him to underestimate the lead time for the manufactured roof trusses. His subsequent education threw the whole schedule off by a couple of months. That alone made the difference between being able to get the exterior painted before winter, or not (as was the case). Another example of poor (or lack of) planning was waiting two months to put in outside stairs to the back entrance of the addition. In turn, that forced every crew member or sub-contractor going in and out of the brand new sliding glass patio door, to have to reach up, grab the handle, and use it to hoist themselves up the 30” to get themselves and their equipment and/or materials into the room. Some of these people were quite large, and I even saw one slip on their way out, grab the handle to catch themselves, causing the door to slam hard at an angle, lifting out of its track. I can’t imagine that kind of abuse will have a positive impact on the longevity of that door, not to mention how inconvenient, unsympathetic, and unsafe it was to make the workers work that hard just to get in and out of the workspace. To my mind, it’s a clear indication of Glen’s poor management skills, and his disrespect for the client, the care of property/structure/materials, and his workers and sub-contractors safety. Overview Conclusion Not long after the final structural inspection was approved by the city and we received our C.O., I asked Quality Calvary Construction to stop working and leave, deciding I would complete/redo the remaining issues myself. So yes, Larry will accurately claim that he offered to fix any mistakes or poor work that we pointed out, and accurately, we would not let him or his incompetent crew do any more work on our house. In claiming he would get it right “this time” he fails to mention how many times we stood by and watched them get it wrong. We felt they had more than enough time to do the best work they are capable of, and they had failed. Here are 10 somewhat random pictures to start, see other reviews for specific pictures in regards to various parts of this project.

Very timely, they identify the problem, they worked for a day and fix the leak.

From estimate to hire there was great communication. The price was a bit higher than other estimates but I'm glad I chose this company. They painted the fascia boards on my two-story multi-level home and did a great job.

Larry was an absolute pleasure to work with. He replied promptly to emails and calls. He was able to match the existing color perfectly as I wanted to retain the color even though the entire home and shop were repainted. He changed the trim color, at my request, which really made a difference in appearance. I also asked about some additional work regarding the siding on the shop and thought his price was very fair. That work was also completed quickly and professionally.

I was very please with the work that was done. It was done efficiently and all the repairs were completed. I would definitely use them again. I was also very pleased with the price.

Excellent work on both jobs! The guys are skilled, meticulous, and easy to work with. They always clean up after themselves and always make sure the work is done right. They are fair in their pricing. I’d certainly use them again!

I have used Larry and his team for a variety of projects at both my former home and my new house. They are trustworthy, professional and knowledgeable. I highly recommend them.

Very well, they were punctual and cleaned up each night.

They contacted me promptly, arrived on time to review the project and presented the quote exactly when promised. The project is now complete and I am very happy with the work performed.

Larry I absolutely loved the work. Feel free to let me know if you ever need further references. They complete the job 150%! The title of their company, shows the exemplary work that is honest and quality throughout their business.

I am happy with all the work they have done.

They were excellent. The price was very good and you can rely on them to do a complete job

The service was wonderful and again they did a superior service. The title of the company describes them well and they did a quality wrk and very trustworthy. note to the service provider: If there is something more that I can say I'd be glad to do it. Im just not sure many sentences will be good for him. Feel free to contact me on my phone.

It was fantastic. They did excellent. They've done lot of painting. I've seen them painted houses and they've done excellent work. Very professional.

They were excellent. They were on time and very personable. I am going to be doing more business with them next year. I am using them next year for another job.

They are sensational. You can trust them and they are the best in Oregon. They are busy but if you can get them don't use anyone else. Their prices are the best and they are reliable.

It looks apart of the house. They have done a very good job. They are tremendous. I can not recommend them highly enough. They are extremely versatile. No job is too big or too small.

Quality Calvary Construction did a fantastic job I was very pleased with every aspect of their work. When they came across something that wasn't included in the bid they came to me and explained exactly what needed to be done and what it would cost me. I really appreciated their integrity.

Larry and Glen did work for us - this was the third job. They installed a 40' block retaining wall to extend our back yard. Then they installed a patio and two walks. Once again they did a great job for a fair price. These guys are the greatest.

Larry and Glen did a wonderful job and their bid was the best. The installation of the wall essentially doubled the amount of back yard we could use. This is the second review I have written and I am convinced that these guys are your best bet for a variety of jobs. They are very responsible, hard working, and expert in what they do - and they do a lot of things. Be sure to mention this Angies review when you contact them. GLM

These guys did a great job in rehabbing a house near our house in Gresham. I had them give me a bid to check out another bid I got. Their bid was less than 50% of the other bid. They did a beautiful job and took care of all of our problems. They are coming back to put in a retaining wall for us. Once again, their bid was about 50% of others I had gotten. As well as being reasonable pricewise, doing a beautiful job, and being hard workers, they are guys you can trust. Be sure to hire them before they get too busy - you won't go wrong.