JLC General Construction, Inc.

The experience was awful. Everything took a lot longer than it should have taken. He used some unskilled workers and some fairly skilled. The work by the unskilled workers was poor. When they enclosed our closet they did not roof it right away.  It was winter and it leaked and water was pouring into the closet which resulted in puddles on the floor. A part of the wall got warped because of the rain and they just put screws into it to flatten it out as opposed to replacing it.

We had them remove a sliding glass door to enclose it and make it into a window and at the same time replace the window next to it. That window is next to exterior steps and should have been safety glass so it wouldn't shatter.  When we had some other work done, we paid them to replace the window with safety glass which cost us an additional amount of around $700, rather than deal with JLC again.

One of their workers went over the paint in our bedroom (they did one coat that didn't cover) and did little dabs of paint here and there to cover up missed spots.  He accidentally used the wrong paint and they had to repaint the entire wall to cover up all the little spots.  This same worker "painted" a combo stain/sealer on our office door.  Instead of looking like the rest of our beautifully finished door, it is a different color, shows paint brush lines, and looks terrible.  I still will be sanding and redoing the door when I have time.

We finally fired them and decided to finish work on our own with another contractor. We settled with them for $2000 less than the payment should have been to finish the exterior.  That wound up costing us $4000 to finish.They were going to do the flooring and we wound up hiring a separate company to finish the flooring. They broke some tile on my tub in the bathroom one of the walls they worked on as part of the project. A year later my bathroom still has the broken tile.  I finally told them I'd do something else in the bathroom becasuse they couldn't find replacement tile.

He gets busy with new jobs and doesn't show up for days and weeks at a time.  Our job, overall, should have taken maybe two months at the outside.  Because they found termites when replacing our sliding glass door, that part might have taken a little longer.  However, our job took 18 months, primarily due to not having anyone working on it full time.  Considering we are talking about the master bedroom and our primary sleeping quarters, this was unacceptable.  The final space looks nice enough, but the quality of work definitely wasn't good.

Throughout the interviewing of various contractors, JLC stood out among the many as the most responsive, amiable, and affordable. We selected him as the contractor to oversee our house remodel as he also exuded the confidence to complete all of the components of the work. We signed our contract with JLC on August 23, 2010. The County permitting process took much longer than John Currier had promised; he had implied it would take no more than 2 weeks, but it actually took closer to 2 months. During this time of waiting, it was often difficult to get updates from JLC about the status of our permit. We had the impression that he would personally walk the permit through the process, but that certainly wasn't the case. Once work finally commenced in late-October, we were very concerned because of the imminent onset of rains, particularly with the re-roofing of our home. John Currier assured us that he would make sure that the roof would be water-tight with tarping if rains were forecast. However, when the rains arrived in the first weekend of November, our house had not been prepared and JLC was slow to respond to our calls over the weekend that urged him to attend to water-proofing our roof. The result was that both of our daughters' bedrooms were damaged by water flowing down through the walls into their carpets. JLC assumed full liability for the mishap, and ultimately pulled out and replaced the drywall, repainted the rooms, and removed and replaced the padding and carpets in both of the bedrooms. While we were pleased that he took care of this 100%, no questions asked, his initial oversight led to a major inconvenience (i.e., the bedrooms were unusable for about 5 days). The work on the roof and kitchen proceeded quickly. JLC had implied that all work would be finished by the holidays, but we really had to push to get a working kitchen just before Thanksgiving. And, even though the vast majority of the work was finished by mid-December, it took until the beginning of March for JLC to attend to the finishing touches. Overall, the communication between us and JLC was often frustrating. He was not consistently responsive, and we were left feeling that we were a very low priority in his overall workload. In addition, he did a poor job in 1) defining the timeline for a task (how long it would take) and 2) keeping to the day to day schedule. However, when his crew was at our home, we had very few complaints. Our Project Manager, Johnathan (one of JLC's crewman) was one of the best, particularly in leading the JLC Team to ensure great quality work, attention to detail, responsiveness, and overall friendly and professional attitude. We loved the JLC Team! We would also emphasize that when mis-communications did occur (e.g., he said, she said), when mishaps happened (e.g., the bedrooms got flooded or one of our fruit trees got damaged), or when work wasn't done to the quality that we wanted (e.g., the tile subcontractor did not set the tile correctly, the fireplace extension wasn't initially installed to code), John Currier/JLC always stepped in, assumed responsibility for the situation, no questions asked. He took care of remedy-ing the flooded bedrooms at his expense; he compensated us adequately for the damaged tree; he himself re-set the kitchen tile and ensured that the fireplace installation was corrected. In other words, he bent over backwards time and time again. John/JLC probably works best when he can be left to implement his project using his creativity and without daily coordination with the homeowner. If you are living in the house, and are wanting to understand the daily process or be involved in scheduling/planning, you will likely be frustrated. Also, they know how to complete the finishing details of a craft project, but often times needed to be pushed to take that last step (or it can be too late if you don't catch the issue early enough). Overall, throughout the job it seemed to be a trial to keep things happening on time and within a reasonable schedule, and we got pretty fatigued tracking the issues. We wanted someone to hold our hand, and instead it seemed we constantly had to be in the mix of things. However, the feeling at the end of the job is about a 90% satisfaction, as the overall product is very good with a few minor details I wish had been completed differently to make the project awesome.

John has always been punctual to his appointments with us and has been the most responsive and professional of all the contractors we considered. In our experience, though, while we were/are under contract with JLC, we have to do more leg-work on getting updates on the status of the projects (we have to call him vs. him calling us). Also, while we were working on house remodel plans, he gave us a great estimate for the overall cost of the project, but did not reign us in during the planning process so that, in the end, the cost was too high and the project not financially feasible. JLC exudes confidence in delivering a quality product at an unbeatable cost and in an expedited time frame. While we were signing the contract with JLC for the roof, John promised that he would walk the permit through the County and get it turned around in a week; we are disappointed that, almost 6 weeks later, we still have no permit and the timeline of the project is getting pushed farther back. We are holding our breathe and waiting to see how the roof project goes, so for now, we will continue to recommend JLC.

From the very start of the project, John's experience and knowledge was very evident. He was able to save us thousands of dollars over other bidders. John and his crew were very helpful with dealing with the city and getting the permits, to daily and weekly updates and keeping the project clean and on schedule. The final product turned out better than expected and I would gladly recommend JLC Contractors for all types of construction work.