Mike Russell LLC

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As I was able to assist his crew and not obstruct their work, I was welcome to do so bringing the expense down. I know Mike from other community activities and that is why I hired him to do the work because I had seen and respected his energy and the quality of his work. When I approached him about this task, after several starts, he met me at the house, we talked about the work that needed to be done, he put together a estimate and with additional conversations we decided on the final project and he gave us a final estimate . The final cost for the project was 3% higher than his estimate. Considering that he didn't know what, precisely, he was getting in to with this job, he was surprisingly accurate with his estimate I think. Even though I have listed a single "service date" , the work really stretched over September, October and November 2011. We were out of the house in other accommodations on the property which certainly took the pressure off for a speedy accomplishment of the work. His crew were well mannered, friendly, skilled and neat. We are greatly pleased with the job that he did for us.

I highly recommend this company for residential additions or energy improvements. We got estimates from several builders looking for energy efficiency, durable and green materials, local materials and suppliers, and cost as priorities. We researched everything we could find in these areas and construction practices and Mike had advanced knowledge in all the options when he came with a proposal. He clearly stays on top of the field in construction methods and his thinking is in line with ours. A factor also in our selecting him was that his is a smaller company specializing in additions and we thought our work would get better priority than with a large company. Mike for our project was the daily point of contact, did the detailed design, and led the on-site work. We did a Time and Materials contract rather than fixed price. This worked out reasonably well but we didn't always consider total cost impact when we added new work as we often did. We developed plans ourselves beginning with a few preliminary plans from an architect, then worked with Mike over the first month or two in modifications. In retrospect we should have worked longer with an architect to develop the plans further so that we had fewer loose ends at start of construction. This was a great company to work with - energetic, motivated, knowledgeable, cost sensitive, demanding of quality in their own work, selects good subcontractors. The final product addition is well-engineered and finish work is excellent. From an energy perspective, our ambitious goal was to have no higher energy use after the addition than before. We just about achieved that since the addition solved some problems with the existing house and is itself very tight. The new basement (of Integrated Concrete Forms walls) interior temperature got no lower than 47 degrees on the coldest days this winter, without heating. The main addition easily reached 70+ degrees after a couple of hours of heating with one of the smaller wood stoves on the market. I highly recommend this company.