Carl E Smith Inc

First, the good, Carl’s crew of two men that handled the structural work (stand alone cabana and attached to home) are top notch. This work is gorgeous, and was done for reasonable price compared to other estimates. Would never work with Carl again, due to numerous issues with concrete crew, and unfinished punch list items despite us having paid in full per his demand, as well as him making no further effort to finish. Concrete crew left concrete stains all over windows, siding and existing brick retaining wall. Washed tools off on their freshly poured, stamped work (1238 sq ft, large project), such that gray, rough concrete residue dried on top, approx 3’x3’ area. When asked to correct, they sanded off multiple areas of good concrete and did not address the rough spot. Insane. Color does not match on two separate areas poured, blamed vendor for mislabeling bags, said vendor would cover correction and Carl is nowhere to be found. Crew attempted to apply seal on a day that it rained, we had to stop them. Carl was out of town, not supervising, despite all of the prior issues. Saw cuts for concrete joints look terrible, see photos attached. Large pieces gone already. Electrical work for hot tub not done to code, even with providing them a simple summary of requirements from spa company on paper. Carl denies receiving it, however this is apparently national code for hot tub wiring. Electrician blew us off when hot tub company asked to resolve prior to install, as Carl had subcontracted them but directed us to deal with them first hand when issue arose, and hung up on us. They wouldn’t ever call us back since we had no invoice with them from original work. We paid a qualified electrician separately to bring installation to code. In the end, Carl asked us to correspond by email, hung up the phone. He knows there are unresolved issues and he never came back. The concrete issues continue to worsen, it’s been almost 3 months since final payment. Total job was 6 months from demo (April 2020) to completion (end of September). There were some reasonable weather delays, but this was outside of that. Very poor scheduling of concrete versus structural crews, because of other jobs, per Carl. Also, Carl would surprise us with requiring us to pay subs cash directly on the spot, outside of the estimate. Spare yourself the heartache and use someone that’s reliable and doesn’t use subs who would do something like this. As we can see from the other review, we may have some warranty since we made the mistake of paying him in full. Will we hear from him? This is not warranty work, but an unfinished job.

Carl built an outdoor patio extension on our home. At the end of the project we requested the ability to walk through the project before submitting the final balance, which amounted to 2% of the total project cost. During our walk through we identified 3-4 small items we wanted to discuss. We were not given the opportunity to do so. Carl told us that the work was deemed within his standard, that no other work was to be performed and that we had an unpaid balance. We tried politely reaching out several times to get the project wrapped up but he blocked us from his phone and email. He also told us there is NO warranty on projects with unpaid balances. At this moment, we are having an electrical issue and the patio is under 1 month old.

He is very difficult to book. He does an excellent job. I did not even get a second bid. He came recommended to me by a friend.