Vale Home Improvement LLC

My project was adding a second story onto the 1950s era 2 bedroom 1 bath portion of my house in Arlington VA. Somewhere around 2010 the previous owners added on a master bedroom / bath and sitting room bringing the house up to 3 beds / 2 baths and around 1800sf, the second floor addition (the subject of this review) brought the house up to just under 3,000sf and 5 beds, 3 baths. The Good: Vale's price came in below the next lowest bid. I was surprised at the time because I had been getting preliminary pricing and Vale and another contractor were very close, with the other being just under Vale's price. However, once we had the bid drawings done and held a pre-bid meeting, the other contractor attended the meeting complaining about rapid price escalation in construction materials and tacked on a big increase in his price. Vale was the only contractor that agreed to let us stay in the house as much as possible. Alfredo (Vale's owner), said that it might only be a day here or there when they needed to take the power down or shut water off that we would need to be out of the house. As it turned out, we stayed in the house the entire time, confining ourselves to the master bed / bath (this was not part of the house getting the addition) and the majority of the kitchen. To their credit, Vale showed up nearly every working day (until towards the end) and sometimes on weekends to catch up. Unfortunately, it was rare to see Alfredo supervising the crews and there was no foreman in charge when Alfredo wasn't there. However, they did work hard, for example, when the trusses were delivered, they were unable to lift them over the temporary power line to the house. To my amazement Vale had them placed on the ground and then raised them by hand onto the framed walls of the second story. In my opinion, lifting 33' long trusses 20' vertically was a herculean task, but they did it without complaint. The Bad: If what you're looking for with your contractor is a lot of communication and collaboration, look elsewhere. For example, the detailed schedule I had written into the contract for Vale to provide turned out to be Alfredo coming over to borrow a piece of paper and writing down what he thought would happen every week or two. This set the tone of things - basically, don't get worked up about things happening according to a specific timeline, don't expect a lot of information coming your way, but trust me things will get done. My architect had shown a 20" overhang around the perimeter of the roof. The front and back were set by the length of the trusses, but the sides had to be framed on-site to the appropriate dimension. After the trusses were framed I realized they were only 12". Alfredo or a foreman on site would have caught that problem before the trusses were set, but they went up unchecked. Alfredo's solution to the problem was to tack on two more 2x4's to the sides, which brought the overhang to about 15". While I wasn't crazy about the compromise and I wasn't asked to approve, I didn't protest any further. Our plans showed a band of white PVC trim right above the windows on the first floor, however, Vale installed the trim higher and exposed the old wood lintels above the windows that had been covered over for 60 years. The old wood was not attractive and stuck out like a sore thumb. Vale wound up just painting all of them without filling or sanding any of them. It looks better than before, but not as good as I hoped or what was in the plans. Also, the wood floor installation was substandard. There are more highly visible nail marks on these floors than any I've ever seen, and they stand in stark contrast to the hardwood on the first floor where nail marks are hard to find. This is particularly noticeable on the stair nosing where some of the marks are large and not at all the same color as the wood. I've asked Alfredo to fix at least the stair nosing, but he has not yet responded. Bottom Line: If you're looking for a lower-priced construction solution with a crew that will get things done and you don't mind not having much communication or collaboration, Vale Home Improvement is a great option. If money is not a problem and you want comprehensive communication and creative, collaborative solutions, you may want to look elsewhere.