Wolak Interiors LLC

Terrible, no services rendered.

We're a military family, and in January, we found out we'd have to move out of state for our next duty station, and thus needed to sell our house. There were some projects that needed to be done before listing it so it would show better. I normally DIY as much as I can, but I've struggled with health issues all year, and with my husband frequently out to sea and unable to do work on the house, I decided to hire a contractor to do some of the work. I did some research on Angie's List to find a contractor with a lot of good reviews and decided on Wolak Interiors. I purchased a Big Deal for a general contractor for a week for $1499 and another for two painters for a day for $349. The fine print on the general contractor deal specified that I would get up to two hours of consultation before the work started and 40 hours of labor, and the painting deal said it would be two painters for eight hours. I called to set up my consultation, mentioning the two Angie's List Big Deals I had bought, and the owner, Mark, came to my house to see what I needed done. A few days later he e-mailed me a quote for the work that made no mention at all of the Big Deal discount. I asked how the Big Deals would be applied and was told that what I'd already paid would be a down payment on the total he gave me, which was nearly twice the total amount I'd already spent. The "down payment" explanation didn't make any sense to me and I felt that I had been misled and that the Big Deal was just basically luring me in with what seemed like a good deal, only to end up being charged the normal price. I contacted Angie's List to try and get some clarification. They did offer me a refund since no work had been done yet, and I should have just done that, but I was desperate to get the house finished and the glowing reviews were enough to convince me to give Wolak Interiors a shot. I was eventually told by an Angie's List rep that I was correct that what I paid should not be a down payment, and that the way this type of deal is supposed to work is to have the contractor give a quote for the entire job and then deduct the amount listed on the deal as the actual value (in this case, $4400) from that. I was assured that this rep knew Mark and that he is a great guy and that we'd just had a miscommunication. I don't believe it was a miscommunication at all, but Mark did contact me and say that he would honor the Big Deals as written and have his guys do 40 hours of labor and send two painters for a day separately, and anything that wasn't finished after that could be completed at the same rate of $299 per eight hour day. We scheduled a week for the general contractor work to start, but later had to delay it a week because the guy that does bathrooms wasn't available. The two painters were able to come one day that first week instead. They did what I'd consider a "just ok" job. It's sloppy around the edges in places, they didn't fill/sand any nail holes or imperfections prior to starting like the Big Deal stated they would, and they didn't put enough paint on in many places, so the previous color shows through. It really needed a second coat, which there should have been plenty of time for with two people working on it, but they seemed to waste quite a bit of time and left after just one coat. The general contracting work started the following Monday, and the contractor that showed up made a lot of complaints about being sore, tired, etc. and said that he didn't do plumbing (and thus couldn't hook up the new vanity), and that he hated installing the type of threshold I'd purchased, among other things. Then he asked me where all of the supplies were, like the cement board, thinset, trim, etc. I told him that the quote I was given said all of those things would be provided by the contractors, and he said he didn't have any of it, so he called Mark and then handed me his phone. Mark told me that since we were doing the Big Deal thing, I had to provide all the supplies. Paying for the supplies was not a problem, but I was very upset that I was not informed of the change in plans, and I felt that it was completely unreasonable to expect a homeowner to know exactly what type of supplies would be needed and in what quantities, even if I had been told to buy them. After demo-ing the bathroom, the contractor told me he was going to the store and that he would call me from there to have me pay for the supplies over the phone. He called me an hour later and said that he had waited in the contractor checkout line at Lowe's for half an hour and that it would be at least another half hour before he could check out if he stayed there, so he was going across the street to Home Depot. That didn't sound very plausible to me that there would be an hour plus wait in line at 10:30 on a Monday morning, but I let it go. He ended up being gone for two hours to buy a handful of items at a store 3 miles away. He only got about half the first bathroom tiled before he left for the day. The second day, 8:30 (when I was told to expect the contractors to start each day) came and went, and I was beginning to think nobody was going to show up. A different contractor did eventually show up around 9:30, and he seemed much more efficient, getting the other half of the first bath tiled and grouted, and 95% of the second bath tiled in half the time that the first guy had worked. The same contractor worked around 4 hours each day for the rest of the week, and other than being a bit messy (leaving cigarette butts all over the driveway and front yard, left supplies out in the yard, put a bunch of trash in the recycling bin, etc.) and slightly unpredictable in when he would show up, he did a decent job. I think he rushed at times, and that made the quality of the work suffer a bit. It's not terrible, but it could have been neater. At the end of the day on Friday, he'd gotten the kitchen backsplash tiled, but it needed to be sealed before it could be grouted, so I was told to put one or two more coats of the sealer on myself over the weekend, and then it would be dry enough for him to come back on Monday to grout it. He also told me that the painters would come on Monday to start on the kitchen cabinets. Monday came and went and nobody showed up or called. Tuesday, I got a call from Mark that the contractor who did the backsplash would be back to grout it between 10 and 11, and he planned to stop by the next day to see the progress himself. Both of the contractors that had worked on the house eventually showed up around 2:00, and they grouted the backsplash and completed a small list of touch-ups/finish work that I requested. They bickered almost the whole time about how to do everything, and it was pretty unprofessional. The same two painters from before came the next morning to paint the cabinets. They were a medium oak and were being painted white, and I was told that they'd need one coat of oil based primer and two coats of latex paint and primer in one. Mark showed up while they were still removing cabinet hardware and doors, before painting, and at that point I was mildly annoyed at how some things had gone, but I was satisfied enough that the work was getting done that things seemed ok. Later, the painters forgot to prime several surfaces, and when I mentioned it, they told me they'd get to those later. It ended up being so much later that they were one coat behind on those spots and never caught up. They did a pretty thin coat of primer and really should have done a second one to cover up the brush strokes better (or, better yet, should have used rollers instead of brushes to begin with), but I guess since it was oil based and the fumes were really bad, they just went straight to the paint after that. Once again, they didn't do enough prep work before painting. They didn't wipe down the cabinet doors to remove any food or grease that was stuck to them, and they just barely scuffed them a bit with a piece of sandpaper. One of the painters came back that evening to finish up, and when he was done, he told me I'd still need to put another coat on one whole side of the kitchen's cabinet frames myself, and he told me that the doors were dry and that he stacked them up in the garage. I ended up putting one coat of paint on the area mentioned, and then another coat on all the frames, and it probably could still use at least one more coat, but that was all I could handle. A few days later, I went to put the hinges on the cabinet doors and found that the paint had not fully cured when they were stacked, so they were all stuck together and the paint pulled off where they were touching. It took a lot of extra work to try and cover up those spots. The doors also had tons of imperfections from not being prepped, from being flipped over before they were dry, from spots that were missed or had drips, and one even had the paint brushed on perpendicular to the grain. I did not ask for the painters to be sent back to fix it, because I was fed up and figured it was pointless and they'd just make it worse and leave me with more things to fix. I had been keeping track of the times that the contractors were working so I knew how much of the 40 hours of contracting remained and could gauge what might be finished in that timeframe. Including the two hour trip to the store the first day, any other lunch/smoke breaks and store runs, counting double for the time that there were two people working, and also rounding up to the nearest half hour for each day's work, I came up with 46 hours total. After everything was finished, Mark called me and told me that there had been 16 extra hours of work after the initial 40, so I was going to owe $598. I asked for an invoice, but never heard from him again. All in all, this experience was pretty awful. I felt really jerked around, and the finished product required a lot of extra work from me to look presentable. At least the house is sold.

I got two other quotes and Wolak Interiors LLC had the best price. I bought new materials and my son and I did most of the work but Wolak was also nice when I had questions when doing it myself. The only thing I didn't like was that I bought the material and they came out and did it for me but I was nickled and dimed to death for paper towels and blockage. He was very nice and helpful.

Mark was very responsive during the scheduling process. If he wasn't able to answer when I called him, he called back promptly. The work was scheduled on a Saturday, which worked great with my schedule. The contractor, Chris, met us at Lowe's to get all of the materials. Once he got to the house, he got right to work. He had all of the tools and everything needed, including primer needed to paint the PVC porch posts. In addition to painting and installing the new posts, he painted the remainder of the porch. Everything was cleaned up well, and he cut the old posts into smaller pieces so that we could get them to the dump more easily. The porch looks great!! I definitely plan to use them again for some other projects around the house.

Very happy with Mark and Staff. One time - Professional .

Very pleased with work accomplished. Workmen came on time every day. They cleaned up spaces after work everyday. Work was done in a professional manner. Very pleased with outcome. As with any job of this magnitude, there were ares that were not covered in original estimate but, Mark was able to work with me on these changes and we are both satisfied with the outcome and price. This company does excellent work and I would have them back and in fact this is the second time I have used this company for repairing /remodeling my home.

My husband and I have a small rental home that has only one bathroom. When our tenants informed us that the tile on the bathroom floor was starting to crack and break loose we began looking for someone on Angies list who could assist us and keep the project to a small, reasonable scale. We are not big time landlords or anything- we're simply a married couple who turned by hubby's bachelor pad into a rental home since selling it wasn't something we wanted to tackle at the time. Our first estimate from an individual contractor came in at over $1,000. We saw Wolak Interiors was offering a labor package special on Angies list and my husband decided to take advantage of it, which is good, because typically I'm leery of such "package deals" and probably would have bypassed the offer. We had a couple hiccups in scheduling initially, no big deal, and a few other snafus that were nobody's fault, I believe, but the finished product was quality- both our tenants and my husband were very happy with the work completed and the time frame it was done in. The job ultimately cost less than $600 total, which helped us a lot considering our small repair budget.

Wonderful so far to deal with. He is very nice.

we called another contractor to perform the work.

Mark, Val and the whole Wolak Interiors crew performed wonderfully. Val took excellent care to make sure we were very happy each step of the way. Although the project took longer than expected, much of that was due to inspections so not really something they could control. We are very very pleased with the quality of the work, the price and the overall way we were treated. Very very professional artisans. We would recommend them to anyone who was wanting to have work done. We are going to have them do our back patio enclosure this month ! Thank you

Very well. The owner was very professional, responded promptly to questions and phone calls. The estimate was clear, and I was told what I needed to do to prepare. The painters came when I was told they would be there and worked throughout two days to complete the job. All work was completed exactly as promised. The workers who came to our house were very pleasant and professional. It was evident they were very experienced and the completed job is beautiful. Also, the workers cleaned up very well, leaving nothing for me to clean up after they left. I couldn't be more pleased with the work, all of the people from the company and the finished job.

The overall outcome was good, although the job took quite a bit longer than we would have liked. Mark was stretched pretty thin during this period and was not always able to commit the people and resources necessary to make things go quicker. This was especially true during the demolition phase, when he had only one worker trying to do it all himself. My husband pitched in and helped for a couple of weeks just to make things go faster and to take some of the pressure off of the sole worker. The pace picked up later, but the time it took to complete the job became a source of frustration for us, since we were by now living in the house. I will say, however, that I believe Mark always did the best he was able to do, given his workload and resources. That is, we never felt he was blowing us off in favor of a more lucrative job. He was just trying to make everything work. Mark pretty much stayed true to his estimate, although he charged us for a couple of things we felt should have been part of the original estimate. One was a $400 charge for a plumber to do some of the work in the bathroom, and the other was replacement siding which we had to buy as part of the exterior job. It's probably our fault that we didn't argue our case, but at the time it didn't seem worth the effort or ill will it may have generated. If we had it all to do over, we would have had him spell out more specifically what the estimate included and did not include Some of Mark's workers were great--especially the one who did all the tile work in our kitchen and bathroom. Mike Crane is a talented professional who really cared about the work he did. We greatly appreciate all his ideas and efforts on our behalf. Our bathroom is a showplace, thanks to Mike. Mark's other workers were all nice people and for the most part competent, but some had a tendency towards sloppiness, which we had to point out to Mark on several occasions. To Mark's credit, he always readily agreed and fixed the problem. Also sometimes we believe he asked his employees to do more than they were capable of doing. There were miscues with the roofing, with our electrical system, and with cabinet installation in the kitchen. In each case, Mark was forced to finally bring in outside professionals to correct the errors that his workers had created and do the job right. He would have saved time, money, and a great deal of frustration on our part had he brought in the right people to do these jobs in the first place. Mark was very good about staying until the job was completed. He kept bringing his people in to finish little jobs that we noticed needed to be done until we were satisfied, and he added the nice touch of bringing in a profession housekeeper at the end to do a final cleaning. The entire process was long and arduous, but throughout, Mark remained a good person to work with. We would hire him again, based on his nice personality and integrity, but would probably ask him to spell things out in more detail from the very beginning so we each knew what to expect, in terms of timelines, costs, and what tasks his workers were capable of doing vs. which ones needed to be done by specialists.

I was pleased with the work. They were quick but not sloppy. I appreciated that the gentlemen were respectful of my children.

Prompt service, curtious, and professional. A very positive experience. I would definitely recommend to others.

My biggest gripe about this company is that I had to contact the company to schedule the work. I feel that if I bought the Deal ahead of time they should contact me. We called them initially the day after we bought the Deal and scheduled an appointment for January 21st which happened to be Martin Luther King Day. The day came and we got the impression that he forgot about us as he scheduled other jobs for that day instead. My husband contacted them and he said he would get back with us for an estimate. A week later we called him back about the estimate. We knew the coupon only covered labor, so we expected extra costs for materials, but the estimate he gave us did not take the Deal into account. He said he would charge us $50 per hour and said nothing about the Deal previously purchased. He said nothing about the materials, or how many hours the job would be required. It seemed like a trick to me, and I started to feel extremely hesitant to use this company. He told us to call back to schedule an appointment for about mid-February, so we did, and he said to wait to schedule the appointment for warmer weather. Now, it's the end of March, and we've called back several times to try to schedule an appointment, but all we got were voicemails. He never called us back and now we are seeking a refund on this Deal altogether.

We agreed on a date (week) for the work to be done, and on that Monday, Mark and Chris showed up promptly, and Chris was the one who actually did all the work. Mark came several times to check on how things were going, and Chris was in contact with him by phone whenever something came up. Chris was very pleasant to have around, very solicitous of what I wanted done (and how I wanted it done, which was really nice!). He took care to not be any more intrusive than necessary, and cleaned up after himself after each job was done, and at the end of the day. I was very pleased with the work and the workmanship - Chris is very detail oriented and meticulous. I am hoping to call Mark and have Wolak Interiors help me with a few more projects later this year. I would not hesitate to recommend this company to anyone needing things done.

Very good job...I would recommend them to family and friends.

Work proceeded on schedule after a timely estimate. Mark's subcontractors did a good job overall. Great work finishing and framing on an old house with some unexpected challenges.

Wolak Interiors LLC had come out and looked at the job to see what was going on. His painters had to come back and do some touch up.

We are renovating our kitchen. Previous owners had a portion of the ceiling dropped and we wanted to return it to original height. We did all demo work ourselves, but needed help with drywall and plaster repair. Mark was very responsive from beginning to end. Upon estimate request, he was available same day to conduct initial survey. We worked together almost daily to get the right approach for our home. Price was very reasonable and he was able to fit us into the schedule (very busy) to help us keep on track with our kitchen cabinet install timeline. His guys did a great job, and we're very happy with the results.

Wolak Interiors showed up and gave us a prompt estimate. Once hired, they were punctual, responsive, and very professional. They used plastic to cover the floors and furniture. Each day, they cleaned up made plans for the next day. They were always on time and returned to check the work and fix a few touch ups. I will definitely use them again and recommend them to my friends and neighbors.

Only got an estimate from them for painting 2 bedrooms. He was over an hour late for our appointment and did not call to let me know he was running late. His estimate was very high based on his deals on Angies List.

I am glad I have hired Wolak Interiors to do our home projects. The crew was very professional and always nice to us. They cleaned up the place every day after finishing work. We will definitely recommend them to our friends and use them in the future. Thank you and keep up the good work.

The previous company did a sub-par job on the ceiling of our tiny master bathroom which was only evident after the ceramic tile met the sloped ceiling in an irregular wave. Mark and Josh were able to make the situation "terrible" situation "pretty good". Honestly, "pretty good" was as good as it is going to get short of starting the bathroom all over. I think they did a terrific job of fixing the ceiling as well as possible while mainting as much headroom as possible and keeping my budget in mind. The absolute best part of the whole thing, is after Josh was done, it was as if no one had ever been in the house (except that the ceiling was fixed). He was very meticulous about cleaning up after himself. I was so impressed, that Wolak Interiors is already back at my house helping me finish up the remodel. I'll call them again when we repaint downstairs and when we embark on the next project here at the house.

Great. Arrived on time and performed quality work.