Get matched with top dock builders in Pittsburgh, PA

Recent Dock Building Reviews in Pittsburgh

• Extreme Decks & Roofing

  5.0

  He gave an estimate of $4,000 for a completely maintenance free 6x14 feet porch for the front. They quoted a completely maintenance free porch for the back, that was 10x20 feet for $10,500. I had received another quote for the back porch for only $7,000 that was maintenance free as well. I couldn't believe the difference in price. I will be going with a different company because of the high priceshow more

  SHARON AND CHAD T.
• Saw Contracting

  2.0

  In regards to the renovation of 8 townhouses project and for some background: I came to learn of Scott Waltenbaugh and Saw Contracting through Angie's List. I worked with him for nearly a year and got to know his strengths and weaknesses. As someone in the real estate business who works with multiple contractors, I feel as though I'm in an excellent position to give you a thorough assessment of Scott's and Saw Contracting's abilities and lack thereof. Initially, Scott was very professional, polite, responsive and attentive. The first and second townhouse renovation seemed to go quite smoothly. I had some initial problems with some of his finish work (ie. ceramic tile not straight, crown moulding not mitered properly, etc), but after pointing it out to Scott, he was able to correct those couple of mistakes during the next renovations. In reading some of the other posts about Saw Contracting, I sense that from Scott's responses to the couple of complaints, he is wanting to portray his Company as a large company that is growing rapidly, with estimators, office personnel, etc. I found this to not be the case whatsoever. Scott is essentially a one to two man show. He will sometimes brings some extremely low skilled help when he needs the extra manpower. During my experience, Scott went through several "assistants" . To demonstrate the quality of employees he employs: One assistant contacted me directly suggesting that Scott was "stealing" from me (although I was never able to substantiate that claim). In another situation I learned that one of his employees was breaking into my vacant property at night and using it as a home. In this situation, Scott actually found out about this, forced his employee to apologize to me, but let his employee continue working with him. And yet in another situation, I was able to prove that an assistant of his actually did steal a lot of roofing shingles from me. I found all but one of Scott's assistants to be extremely low skilled, unreliable, unprofessional and dishonest. In addition, other than this one articular employee "Lance," I do not recall any other employee that stayed with him for longer than a few weeks. It was probably the 5th or 6th townhouse renovation that I started sensing "attitude" from Scott. He started to demonstrate a consistent denial of responsibility for certain duties, some disorganization in doing tasks not required, or not doing tasks that were required, and then an obvious effort to purposefully ignore my phone calls, text messages and/or voicemails when prior to this time he showed none of these tendencies. The part that aggravated me most about this what that I specifically stated at the beginning that the reason I wanted to hire him was because I was not happy with the lack of communication and disorganization from my previous Contractor that worked on these townhouses. It seemed to me that Scott (during the last few townhouses) went out of his way to ignore my calls/texts at all costs. To me, this lack of communication would peak whenever we would have a minimal disagreement. To me his approach at times seemed childish and revengeful, all of which seemed to escalate with time. As far as the skills Scott proved to be capable of, I would list them as follows: Painting, Crown Moulding, Baseboards, window installation, Closets & Doors, Fan Installations, Cabinet Installations, Hardwood Floor Installations, Door Hardware, among other small odds and ends. As far as the skills Scott proved to be incapable of: New Construction, stone work, plumbing, electrical, drywall repair, recessed lighting installation, cleanup at the end of each job, planning ahead, organizing a job site, minimizing supply/material costs/purchases, supervising employees, estimating, etc. In regards to my New Construction Project: This is without question where my relationship with Scott and Saw Contracting was a much more costly experience and the one that I strongly urge you to learn from. I hired him to perform the framing work at the New Construction site. Scott was involved minimally, "sub" contracted about 90% of the work to several different contractors who would consistently quit on him and later talk negatively of him to me directly. Then, Scott later showed the audacity to blame me for "the negotiated price being to low" as the reason he could not get good help or deliver a good product. On several instances of trying to explain my position to him, it seemed it could not sink in for him. So I will explain it here the same way I explained it to him. "If you agreed to do a certain job for a certain price, then you have an obligation to get it done in a workmanlike manner at that price. It is unprofessional, unacceptable and borderline criminal to attempt to justify incomplete and/or sub par work as being acceptable as a result of the negotiated price that you agreed on being too low." I truly believe this is where Scott and my relationship went straight down hill. I lost tremendous respect for him in his attempts to justify his poor work in this manner. Ultimately, he performed VERY LITTLE observation of the workers (framers) on site, and then took a substantial chunk of their pay while leaving little to his sub contractors. At the end of the day, as it relates to this project, he has left me with a house that is out of square in many areas, and has cost me thousands to repair drywall after the fact just to get it to a reasonably acceptable level. He has forced me to accept a house that shows obvious evidence of sub par construction. He proved to be extremely unskilled in the New Construction aspect of homes. Several of his work was simply incorrect and was later, essentially mocked and proven to be incorrect by engineers and other professional contractors that followed. During the framing, several areas were not finished, some items were just done improperly, yet he stressed (become extremely aggravated while doing so) that these areas were correct and he defended his work at all costs, even when licensed professionals were saying different and to the naked eye it was obviously incorrect. He consistently failed to return to perform the needed work/reparations to complete and/or to repair what he was already paid for. From my experience, I found all of this to be signs of someone who is not ready to call themselves a professional. Scott gave me the impression prior to giving him this Job that he framed "hundreds" of homes. It was obvious in the end after thousands have been spent in correcting his errors, that he truly did not know what he was doing when it came to New Construction related work. I found scott's warranty of his work to be non-existant, and his obligation to finish or perform duties after he may have monies advanced to him to be extremely unreliable and many times simply ignored. He does not stand by his work. In this respect, I would be hesitant to ever give scott any new construction, total gut jobs and/or addition related work. Further, I would be careful to ensure that if any pay structure is set up for him, it involves significant work up front prior to initial payment and final payment withheld until a professional inspection of the completed work is performed. In summary, if you have a small odd and end that you could use a handyman for, Scott and Saw Contracting is probably a good go to guy for a once or twice situation. If you are looking for a professional, that only offers work he can perform properly, that stands by his work, and that will correct any issue if it ever arises, I would urge you to look elsewhere. In my personal, professional opinion, Saw Contracting is not a professional Contracting Service as Scott portrays it to be. He is a handyman with limited capabilities at bestshow more

  Jason C.