DAD & SONS

see above.

We discovered that the roof badly needed replacing during a home inspection before purchasing our house. Wesley came out to perform an estimate, and we told him to give us a "worst case scenario" estimate, as we were negotiating a concession from the seller. The estimate was still a great price, so we decided to go with him. We hired him shortly after closing on the house (late December) and he said he'd start "in a week or two" on this "2 and a half day job". He finally showed up to start almost two months later! Granted, the weather (New England winter) wasn't particularly cooperative, but we had to keep calling him to be sure he was even coming (did not try to call us - a simple courtesy). He started pulling off shingles on February 14th, and finally finished on the 27th. As best we can tell, the workmanship is good, but good grief it took forever! He would arrive late in the day (or even after dark), work for a few hours, and disappear again. It was only after my husband had a nail (from the roof) skewer his foot through his shoe that they even attempted to clean much of the material that had been thrown onto our yard, forcing us to keep our rambunctious two-year old inside at all times. Meanwhile, our driveway was blocked by the dumpster, our windows were blocked by tarps... Wesley's excuses for coming hours later (daily) than he had told us ran the gamut. I joked one day to my spouse that he would tell us "the dog ate my homework" next, and wouldn't you know, the following day, he said he was delayed because their dog bit his son (who would be one of his helpers). Finally, when the job was done, he came and asked for the balance of the money he had estimated. We hesitated, remembering that we had gotten a worst-case scenario estimate, and the roof hadn't QUITE been that bad. (estimate included replacing all of the plywood (48 sheets) but he had only needed to replace 6 sheets) He pulled out a copy of the estimate that had altered "48 sheets of plywood" to "some sheets of plywood". Thankfully, I had my copy of the original estimate, and held him to it. he conceded the price of the unused plywood, but wouldn't come down any further. At that point, we just wanted to get rid of him, so we paid that remaining balance. Two of our neighbors had been considering him to do their roofs, but after seeing him in (in)action, they're going elsewhere. His good price is not worth the hassle!

Wes was local, had done much work in the area, was slightly lower than 3 other quotes, and did much of his own work. His 3 references checked out good - very satisfied. Due to rain, he was 2 weeks late starting. He estimated 5 days to complete but it took 2.5 weeks - some due to rain and some due to him not showing up or only working a few hrs a day. Wes is also a talker. Due to availability of shingles, we ended up getting lifetime warranty shingles instead of the 30 yr we contracted for at the same price. We are happy with most of the work, happy with the shingles, but not sure that the ridge vent was installed as good as it could have been - roof decking was not cut uniformly at 1'' each side - some places have no opening at all and the job took too long.