Steel Bridge Construction LLC

We hired Steel Bridge in August 2022 to finish our completely unfinished basement, framing out the area to have two bedrooms, a common area, a storage closet, utility closet and bathroom. They started in late September, and while the job is now complete, it took far longer than quoted and didn’t come out the way we’d expected or hoped. The job was “finished” in February 2023— while the work was “done,” there remains much we will be touching up and improving over time. Stan’s subcontractors vary widely in talent, skillset, pride in workmanship, and work ethic. Living on the outskirts of Denver in Brighton, we felt almost “punished” for living outside Denver by both Stan and his subcontractors who would show up when they felt like, or sometimes not at all, and rarely within the window Stan and Gaby promised. We specifically hired a GC to project manage and manage all the subcontractors, and Steel Bridge did not deliver. Once the initial rough-ins of electrical, plumbing and framing were done, Stan started showing up less and less, often visiting our home only every two to three weeks. He was rarely, if ever, present for inspections which put the onus on us to manage the experience and report back to him with any improvements or changes the inspector required. His overall lack of presence on this job presented a myriad of problems as many times his subs would complete work that turned out to be not to his or our liking, and then they would have to spend MORE time redoing it. Some things had to be redone three to four times. If Stan had been more hands-on and if things had been done right in the first place, this project would have been done in late November or December. Additionally, much seemed to be lost in translation between Stan and the workers. It was an everyday occurrence that a subcontractor would show up to work without knowledge of what problems or areas they were supposed to address despite us providing Stan with photos and details of areas that needed work the day(s) prior. This left my husband to serve as project manager, communicating with subcontractors as best he could despite language barriers and regularly checking in on their progress in Stan’s absence. It almost felt to us as if we were being punished for the fact we work from home and my husband’s a relatively handy guy, which gave us a suboptimal experience because Stan knew we’d help the project cross the finish line. Additionally, Stan informed us that we were outside the delivery area for the Redbox+ all-in-one dumpster and porta potty solution for construction, so he ordered another company’s dumpster and neglected spending the money to get his workers a porta potty. We made the guest bathroom on our main floor available to them, but still had a few instances of finding water bottles full of urine in the worksite and excrement in the new toilet installed in the basement. Mind you, there was no toilet paper or soap in the basement yet, so we were disgusted to see that. Our biggest concern with the work completed is the overall lack of attention to detail and pride in workmanship, as well as care for our home and things. All in, this job cost us $100K, and aspects of the work look like it was completed by novices. The areas where this is especially evident are transitions in flooring, walls, or from baseboards to door frames with sloppy caulk and spackle work. The shower was also a persistent issue during this project – from tile not being laid level or straight to his subs not reading the directions (provided before start of work) for the steam shower unit requiring work to have to be redone to hazy grout on the shower floor that Stan said was just something that happens with dark grout (mind you we used dark grout in the kitchen and on the fireplace in previous jobs and never had this issue). We bought top of the line shower and bathroom fixtures, and they all have scratches on them from being carelessly handled. Throughout construction, Stan’s crews never treated our home like a professional worksite, never covering our existing carpeting on the basement stairs or putting down ram board to protect the newly-installed floors. Halfway through construction Stan asked my husband “You’re planning on replacing the carpet on the stairs right?”- to which my husband replied “No- we just installed that two years ago.” Luckily, the cleaning crew was able to get all the drywall and paint out of the carpet, but we would have been very unhappy if we had to replace new carpet due to laziness. Quick fixes, rather than doing things right the first time, seem to be Stan’s M.O. The week we were supposed to sign off on the job, I discovered the wall was still open under our bathroom vanity! If we hadn’t caught this, we would have been left with a partially open wall, leaving our new bathroom open to pests and rodents. Stan’s solve was to quickly cut baseboard pieces to cover the gap and install them without moving the vanity. We saw a similar attempted quick fix when his subs exchanged one of the doors we had purchased for the job because they intended to mount a smaller door inside the existing frame rather than doing the work to remove the old frame and hang a door of the same size. The worst of Stan’s subcontractors were the painter and the handymen. I’m not sure if the ponytailed painter is lazy or visually impaired, but his work is sloppy and looks like you allowed your kindergartner to help paint the house with you. When it comes to handyman-type work like hanging doors, towel bars and laying baseboard, Stan favors using these two old men, one short and white and one taller and Black who are as useless as a screen door on a submarine. If you hire Stan and these men show up at your house, DO NOT let them in the door. These men turn everything they touch to problems. Their work had to be done and redone so many times we lost track. They also were tasked with moving our already-assembled vanity downstairs. My husband told them to be careful and go slow. They didn’t and ran a dolly directly into the side, dinging the vanity’s paint in multiple places. This is just one of many instances of work not being done with care or right in the first place, causing lengthy delays and half-assed fixes. At the end of the project, we eventually signed off on all of the work and paid Steel Bridge the remaining money, because we were burned out from the experience and were watching his subs attempt to fix the same issues over and over only to have them turn out worse. We made our dissatisfaction with the end quality of the job known to Stan who, to his credit, offered to keep working on things until we were happy, but with the same people doing the work, we knew that the end result would continue ending up the same or worse. We are now going to have to spend our own time to correct a number of these quality issues ourselves and hire a grout specialist to see what can be done about the shower floor. Our advice to you is – don’t hire Steel Bridge if you have a keen eye for detail or want a smooth, hands-off experience where everything is managed for you. They can’t deliver that.