John Volpe Construction

We are extremely pleased with the work of John Volpe Construction. From the first day and continuing until the end, John was hard working, prompt, he communicated well with us and gave us good advice. He was very professional and easy to work with. The job was completed earlier than anticipated. Having a total kitchen remodel is stressful to live with but John and the men he worked with made our lives a little easier. They put in long hard days and even weekends. We would recommend John Volpe Construction with high marks on a job well done.

This was the first part of the 3 jobs. We selected this company in large part because we read good reviews on Angies list and also at the interview they stated they could do quality work and finish before cold weather hit. They stated that once they started our jobs they would be working just on our place until it was finished. The owner talked up their work and abilities and promised to be helpful in any way he could. We felt that was substantiated on the Angies list reviews we had read. Unfortunately, those reviews were not like our experience at all. Things started out well. The work began a few days earlier than they estimated and things at first moved along quickly. We were really happy and initially planned to give them other jobs once these 3 were completed. This job on the framing, window installs and master bedroom remodel was near completion when things started to go less well. The owner lost some parts they had purchased and insinuated that we or our kids had something to do with it. (some small fittings in a bag). This made us feel very uncomfortable and later they lost other parts which I had purchased for them to do work. I spent 1/2 a day looking for them and finally found them right where they had forgotten they put them. After they finished the door and window installs he told us they were ready for us to call the stucco people for the exterior re-do (which we contracted separately), and after that work was all completed, and beautifully done, Mr. Volpe cut off a couple of inches of the new stucco trim at the bottom, around the sliding doorway, to install an additional support board under the door and behind that stucco trim that they had forgotten or neglected to install before hand. They threw out those stucco trim pieces and left raw edges hanging there instead of replacing the pieces and having them patched. He expected me to have the stucco people come back and repair what he had done at my expense which I ended up having to do because Volpe Construction refused to be responsible for it. Several places on the drywall texture were rubbed off by boards they leaned against the wall. They painted over them and would not fix that. There were some paint and texture problems that were fixed but then not re-painted. They hit one of the window trim pieces with a hammer, dented it badly, and would not replace it, so I have a small smashed area on the front window trim. They left several hammer dents in the drywall that showed, especially on the ceiling, which they would not fix. Also at the ceiling, where they joined one piece of drywall to another all across the ceiling a crack appeared and opened up which they tried to fix once but could not seem to get it done correctly. It is still an apparent crack. The finish work they did on the wood trim (stain and clear coat) and doors was drippy in a lot of places or had pooling of the clear coat and thick white areas in the corners that Mr. Volpe tried to tell me was the glue from the door manufacturer but it had not been there when I inspected the doors at delivery and was not on the other doors we ordered that had not yet been finished. They spent a small amount of time working on this when I complained and then Mr Volpe said they were done and refused to do anything about the majority of it. The beautiful expensive doors I bought need to be refinished. The worst problem in the master bedroom stemmed from a problem that Mr. Volpe originated in the master bathroom with the floor. The floor appeared flat and all one level before he started working or laying tile and for some reason without my permission he decided to level the floor so he wouldn't have to do any angle cuts on the wall tile and goofed it all up. He did not tell me the problem until he had decided to quit leveling and began to taper things back down to where they were into the bedroom and closet trying to fix it. The tile was set in place over the mess and he would not correct it properly. Because the bedroom entry door was perpendicular to the bathroom door this sloping area made it so the new bedroom door had a gap under it which was not level. At one end it was over an inch higher than the other end. Also, the floor is now not level into the family room or into the closet in an obvious way that it had never been before. Basically they started leveling the floor, realized they didn't really want to finish leveling the whole house floors and quit part way so that where we had no appearance of an unlevel floor before I now really did. I am not sure the floor was ever unlevel at all until he began working on it. It had never been a problem and looked great. I now have ramps into the bedroom and closet from the bathroom and need to have the floor level adjusted going into the family room now also or tear up all the new floor work I had done. This was a terrible mess that they expect us to just live with. It will be very expensive to have the new bathroom floor torn up and part of the new bedroom wood floor torn up to fix this problem Mr. Volpe caused us. I was charged extra at the end for many things I knew I had discussed with Mr. Volpe in the original bids. He even refused to do things that were stated clearly in the bids like installing the shower door (which is reviewed project 2, master bath). It really pays to get all of the details you originally discussed with a contractor in writing so they don't try and double charge you for it. Not long into this first project, Volpe, who had told me he did most of the work himself, began doing other jobs and leaving our job to young guys. (At least the young guys were very respectful and friendly and hard working.) Frequently, when Mr. Volpe did come to work, the business owner began being kind of nasty about things and it only accelerated. He blamed things on us or on the wood or tile or whatever we bought to explain why he couldn't install things correctly. There were weeks at a time when no one at all showed up to do any work. There were lots of excuses always. In the end when I tried to get some unfinished work completed and some poor workmanship fixed before the final payment the owner resorted to threats of putting a lien on our house, yelled at me in front of his employees and treated me with so much hostility that I didn't even want him to come back to fix anything. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because he simply stated that he was finished and that everything was perfect and he would not do another thing. He gave us a bill at the end for an additional 6,300 dollars for largely unreasonable things. This was really a distressing and disappointing set of projects. I have detailed the other 2 projects separately, as the estimates were separate, and will be soon adding photos of some of the problems I’ve described.

No show. No communication

It was the best experience that I've ever had with a contractor. Not only was John there most of the time but his crew including Kaelen and Brett were outstanding. These people actually take pride in what they do. Kaelen installed this wall of 1 X 2 inch glass tiles and as hard as I looked, I could NOT find a mistake. They were beautiful AND level. Brett cut every glass tile with perfection. With every job there will always be a couple of "OOOOPS" moments. The difference was that they corrected the problem with a smile and actually insisted that it needed to be corrected. Many contractors would say "oh, you really don't need that fixed, it will work well", but not John. They made sure everyting was great. I was so impressed with them that I hired them again to replace all my interior doors and baseboards. Down the road, they will be the only company I hired to do my bathrooms.

It was a two phase project, because I found some extra work that they could do part way through the first phase. I liked that they were the kind of people who I enjoyed having in my home from seven in the morning until about five at night. Nothing is worse than having people work on my house and being unpleasant. They did a very good job with the work and they were good about not bumping the price. They did not pull any shenanigans trying to get me to up the price. They let us purchase our own supplies and materials which saved some of the price as well.