EDWARD T COALE CONTRACTOR

It breaks my heart to write this review, but I simply have no other alternative. Ed seems like a very nice guy and I am sorry that he has let us down so thoroughly. We first hired Ed to enclose an exterior, second-story porch in our 1879 4,000 square foot house. We have a severely disabled son and need the space for him, so the therapists could work one-on-one with him, and to resolve an orphan bedroom problem and give him his own room. We later hired him to build out a section of the house that used to be a dentist?s office into a mother-in-law?s quarters for my aging mother. Our issues are all related to the first build ? the enclosed porch. The first rain after the construction was completed, water poured into the house downstairs. It came through the ceiling in the living room destroying it and streamed down light fixtures and a circular fan in the kitchen. All directly beneath the porch Ed had enclosed. Later, water also worked its way down from the ceiling in the new room that Ed had built, soaking the walls and plaster upstairs. We called Ed and he came out and moved some of the flashing around and started talking about the rubber roof, implying that that was the problem. I know virtually nothing about construction so I believed him. To be fair, I don?t think Ed was lying to me, I think he was just worried and wasn?t sure what the problem really was. Nonetheless, I followed his advice and began to bring roofers out. I used several different ones over the following years, but despite all their patches, water still poured into the house (destroying several replacement ceilings in the family room). During this time, Ed also mentioned painting of the outside half-brick he had installed, so I brought out professional painters. Water still poured in. After years of wrestling with the problem, I brought in three roofers to get quotes on replacing the whole roof, telling them that I just wanted the water to stop coming in, so whatever that takes. The roofer I selected came and completely replaced the roof, under the roof, and redid all the drainage. Next rain, water poured in again. We spent years trying to stop the leaks at a cost of over $10,000. Finally we had to bring in a forensic engineer. He carefully located the problems: first, the location where Ed?s new construction attached to the existing walls of the house all leaked like sieves, the flashing and work around where the chimney came through the second floor roof was not sealed or flashed properly, and the windows that Ed had installed leaked. Caulking the windows did nothing to stop the leaking windows, so they will need to be pulled and reinstalled correctly. When my wife contacted Ed about the problems, Ed refused to come back and wasn?t willing to fix these problems, which now we knew were directly related to the work he had done for us. I was even more offended when my wife told me that he had told her he and his wife had ?prayed on it? and that he felt ?in his heart? that he could come back into our house. I don?t know why he had this attitude. Maybe he didn?t like us. But I don?t think that is relevant. If you are a professional, you stand behind your work. Clearly I was wrong to believe him about the rubber roof, but I am not a construction person so I had no reason to not believe him. I didn?t hold him accountable for the roof, but when we discovered that it was not the roof as he suspected but actually was his construction, he should have come back and fixed his mistakes instead of making excuses. We brought out another contractor who, after speaking with the forensic engineer, resolved the wall problem, thus stopping most of the water. We are still working on finding someone to pull the windows and install them correctly. This all at additional expense. By the time all is said and done, we will have spent more money trying to fix the leaks his construction created that it cost us to build out the room. For years now we have been living beneath plastic and duct tape in our family room. My kids were forced to celebrate Christmas beneath a leaky roof and watch TV through streams of water falling into buckets all over the family room, kitchen, and upstairs room (for my disabled child). As I said, Ed seems like a nice guy, but his refusal to fix his own mistakes is reprehensible and completely unprofessional. You may have a better experience, but ours has been an expensive nightmare lasting years. He should have stood behind his own work and made it right.

his business is very small & he does misc. things. it went well.