MR FIXIT INC

Overall I would say I am happy with the end result because we love our new kitchen and additional bathroom. Also, the main two employees in the company who do the majority of all the work are great. Those individuals get the work done and i would hire them without issue. However, the issues always became evident once the manager got involved in the day to day items. And for this project, there are a lot of issues that I would advise others be aware of: ? Communication - Very poor. The owner has ignored my emails and voicemails for four months on a couple of outstanding items from our work. Also, during the project he will avoid calls/emails for items he doesn't have answers for instead of just explaining why he doesn't have an answer. ? Change controls - The contract stated that any additional cost over the agreed upon cost must be managed via change controls. At the end of the project, he surprisingly invoiced me an additional $8K of work. We never had any change controls for the majority of them. He did produce one change control early on for vents that needed to be moved but he tore all the old vents the next morning before we could agree on the work and cost so we never signed the change control. ? Project planning - Poor. Most of these issues came around inspections. He never set target dates and pre-scheduled for inspections. Instead he would wait until the work was completed and THEN call for inspections. This made us lose over a week's time on our timelines. It is much easier to cancel an inspection with the city than try to get one scheduled at the last minute. Also, he tried to catch up time by subbing out sheet-rocking (which they completed in one day). However, again, he did not call for the sheet rock inspection until it was done when we all knew it would be done that day. BTW, we failed three inspections (one plumbing and two electrical) so that too was an issue. ? Sub-Contractors - He sold me saying that all the workers are his employees and they never took other jobs while on a big project like mine. His plumber and electrician are both subs. He also subbed out sheet rock and taping and mudding. Conveniently, during these days he sent his workers on other jobs. Also, they will sit on sending out their subs until the last minute so that they don?t have to call them back multiple times. As a result, we sat without some electricity/lights and plumbing for days because he would not call them out. ? Sloppy on Details - It is either the sheet rocking or the painting, but all the corners of walls are a mess. I would advise bringing in your own painters because the same guys that do all the work are the ones that paint as well. For the amount charged, I would have expected better quality. Also, they installed sliding doors that both do not open and close properly. You can see the marks on the doors from hitting the frame. I admit, they are reclaimed doors and were warped, but I offered to buy new doors and he actually invoiced me for them. But he never did the job. Another example...we had drawings to have a five foot opening from the kitchen to the dining room. When the manager did the work, I measured the opening to be a full foot shorter than the drawings. I called him out on it and he had to fix it, The full 5 feet required some extra work moving heater vents to make it happen and he obviously chose to make it smaller because it was less work for him and was hoping I didn't see it. Lastly, in the bathroom for our toe kick heater, they tried to use the cabinet itself as the vent! Needless to say all of our items in the cabinet became hot...really hot. So they came and fixed it with heating duct tape and a dryer vent they bent and crumpled to fit instead of getting an actual custom vent pipe made for this. Also they cut the hole in the floor for the heater in the wrong spot so they had to build out the bottom of the cabinet to make it work. It works but it's not professional in any way. ? Invoicing - Keep tabs on this. Mine was a mess. They double charged me for the permits. They also billed me for items I supplied on my own (toilet, shower valve). I would say overall that they are ok for smaller jobs like a straightforward remodel of one room where the layout is the same. However anything larger than that I would say stay clear of them. Project planning is not their strong suit. Just understand that you have to really stay on top of them