T Cook Co

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Tom Cook is the consummate professional with a can-do attitude. He has a wealth of experience and understanding about the details of complicated projects, and he makes things happen, with excellent communication along the way. Generally, I have found those in the construction trade to be slow, unresponsive, and unprofessional. Tom puts those people to shame. He delivers on everything he says he will, and he even goes beyond expectations by keeping track of the smallest of details/requests on the project. This is far and away the best experience I have had with someone in the construction trade. He really had my best interest at heart, and he is an incredibly ethical businessman besides (again, something that seems rare in the construction trade).

On time, within budget, with careful attention to our wishes and flexibility to adjust when our thinking about some detail (e.g., trim, location or size of certain features). We sought bids and entered into discussions with other contractors for each of the projects mentioned above, and we believe that T Cook Co offered and delivered the best value we could have gotten. The 2011 project was particularly noteworthy in this regard. Notwithstanding the potential disruption, we elected to stay in our house while the addition work was done, and Cook planned and personally managed the work to make this possible. For family reasons, we had a firm end of year deadline for completion of the project, and Cook delivered with a little time to spare despite extended terribly unfavorable weather and some difficulties related to the age of our house that surfaced along the way. We are thoroughly satisfied and, while we believe in competing everything, would be highly likely to select T Cook Co for any future projects we may undertake.

Tom was referred by a colleague and had an 'A' rating on the BBB site. His quote for the interior painting and wainscoting came in under the other four quotes we received, but his price for the hardwood refinishing was about $1,500 more than our lowest quote for the floors and more expensive than all of our other quotes; however, we decided we would prefer to use one General Contractor for all of the work rather than trying to coordinate multiple contractors. Huge mistake . . . The plaster repair, painting, and wainscoting were completed in about one week in early January 2010. The plaster repair is decent, but not great. There are plenty of uneven patches where it wasn't sanded down well before painting. The major running cracks were filled and are fairly invisible. Plaster repair gets a C. The interior painting was completed with good lines, but they did very little 'prep' beforehand and painted over masking tape and other objects that were on baseboards, walls, etc. that were left from the previous owner. Additionally, paint on the window trim just peels off if you stick a piece of tape to it, so they didn't prep those properly either. Finally, they sketched a mock-up of our wainscoting in the dining room (writing on the walls with pencil and magic marker), this bled through the paint and was visible about four months later. They touched up part of it, but missed some of it as well. We have no desire to fight with them to get the remainder taken care of. Interior painting gets a D. The wainscoting is the only part of the work that we can say we are fairly happy about. It is separating a bit from the wall in one spot, but given the level of service we were provided in the other areas, this was the shining light of their work. Wainscoting gets a B. The floors were completed the week after the other work and were subcontracted out to Borders Contracting owned by Frank Garcia. This was the worst experience ever!!! They sanded the floors down to the bare wood, stained and applied oil-based poly. After we moved in we noticed everything scratched the floors. We informed Tom who just put us in touch with the subcontractor (Frank), Frank gave us lots of ?reasons? why it happened, but after having them come by two times to see that the poly actually pealed up when you stick scotch tape to the floor or if you scratched at it with your finger nail, they decided to correct it. We moved out of the house for a week (including moving all of our furniture to the basement to clear the floors). We moved back in and the floors weren?t very much better (they essentially just applied additional coats of poly even though they later acknowledged that the problem was between the first coat of poly and the bare wood, so they should have known additional coats would just peel up too). We noted this to Frank because Tom had pretty much left us to deal with Frank on our own even though we didn?t have a contract with Frank, just with Tom. Frank gave us a one-year warranty on the floors, so after a few months of seeing how bad the floors had gotten, we email Tom and Frank to have the floors sanded again, down to the bare wood, and refinished. After being unresponsive for a week or more, Frank finally responded, agreed to come out and perform the work again, and set a date. We completed a sample patch, picked the stain color, then they sanded the one room, and put down the stain and poly in that one room (this was for an adhesion test). The adhesion was good, but the color was not what we approved. Frank basically said, ?Well, I don?t know what you think you saw, but this is what you approved?. We were already moved out, Tom was not responsive, so we told Frank to continue. Ultimately, we ended up with durable floors but not in the shade we wanted. Additionally, the team who sanded left divots along the walls where they changed sanding tools for the areas against the wall. In the right light you can see areas where the poly did not get applied in all spots (especially along the walls) and other areas where the poly puddled. We moved out of our house for two weeks the second time, moving everything to the basement in order to allow them to do a below average job. The floors get a huge F, we would never recommend working with Tom. He hung us out to dry with Frank and didn?t act as our general contractor to ensure we received the service we paid for. To add insult to injury, we had to touch up the interior walls after being dirtied by the team who came in to refinish the floors again. Tom does not act as a general contractor. In our experience, he simply quoted us a price, farmed the work out, then when something went wrong, left us to work with his subcontractor to get it corrected. He lacks integrity and is not professional.