Something Different Contracting

The old saying goes "good, fast, and cheap -- pick two". Unfortunately, we only got "good" from Something Different -- their price wasn't outrageous but not great either, while they took 6 weeks to do a job that they initially estimated would take one or two. Moreover, they didn't warn us that delays were impending -- we had to prod and ask once it became clear that they hadn't been there in a while. Good quality though.

Really great.

Something Different were great. David (owner) and Tony (project manager) were on time, communicative and professional. The employees performing the work were also punctual and did a good job cleaning up afterwards. Overall very happy with the experience!

Dave (the owner) and Amilcar (the project lead) were excellent. We first called Dave following a home inspection that revealed the issues in a home we were under contract to buy. Before we closed, we wanted to know how much it would cost to fix the issues, which mostly involved the kitchen floor and joists. Dave came out to the house to make an estimate. He provided a detailed, itemized proposal that we submitted to the seller to ask for a significant price concession for the required work. The seller didn't like that, of course, but we worked things out eventually. Dave was helpful and responsive during this stressful period.

We also asked Dave to do some other work while SDC repaired the kitchen floor and joists. For example, we had SDC remove a utility closet in the kitchen, which contained the furnace, water heater, and laundry. The original plan to move the utility closet behind the first floor bathroom didn't work, so Dave came up with a few alternatives, all of which (unfortunately) were substantially more expensive and delayed the project a couple weeks. We ended up scrapping the furnace for decentralized mini splits, which let SDC remove some ducts from the first floor and avoids the large temperature gradient that would be in our house if we had central HVAC. We replaced the water heater with a tankless model. And we replaced the combo washer/dryer with a full-sized washer and a full-sized dryer, which SDC installed in the guest room closet on the second floor.

There were some minor bumps along the way that increased the project cost. The electrical panel was old and needed upgrading to handle the new minisplits and laundry machines. The kitchen wasn't wired properly, so SDC had to fix that. (To be clear, the kitchen was improperly wired before Dave even touched the house.) Dave forgot to put in his bid the baseboard heaters he installed in the bathroom, though it was really the electrician subcontractor's fault because he hadn't told Dave about the heaters. Dave and the subcontractor owned up to the mistake and cut us a break on the cost.

In the end, we have a beautiful new kitchen floor, a kitchen that's 1/3 larger than it was, higher ceilings (from eliminating ducts), and energy-efficient appliances. As far as I can tell, Dave's team damaged absolutely nothing in the house and not a single thing is missing. I stopped by the house frequently to pick up the mail and always found Dave's crew hard at work. SDC threw in a few bonuses for free, like an outdoor outlet and installing an additional overhead kitchen light. We didn't ask for these things, so we were pleasantly surprised. To me, they represented SDC wanted us to be happy with their work and wanted us to feel that they delivered good value.

Throughout, Dave and Amilcar were responsive to emails and calls. They fixed the little issues that came up quickly, before they became big issues. Dave was especially good at balancing cost and quality in his recommendations, steering us away from costly work that wasn't necessary and wouldn't improve our quality of life.

My wife and I feel Dave treated us fairly and professionally. We're extremely satisfied with the value we got for our money and the quality of SDC's work. We'd absolutely hire SDC again.

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It took about 4 months start to finish. This is the 4th major project I've had with them, so I will just review this reno and not the others. We moved out in mid December and returned in mid April. In that time there was a slight change in plans with the layout on my part. It was "since you're doing X, you may as well do Y" but I tried to limit that to keep costs down. We worked on keeping the costs down, like keeping as much of the old stuff as possible.
The head foreman/project manager was communicative, but a few things would slip through the cracks because sometimes I failed to cc him on some emails, or it was unclear who was going to take care of what. I bought a new microwave, and I tracked down the new dishwasher that seemed to be on backorder forever. With a project as large as ours there are many moving parts. There were some old things that couldn't be reused and I was very sad, because I hadn't planned on what would replace them.
The few changes and snags made the prediction of a 2-3 month project into a 4 month reality, so that really shouldn't count against them timewise.
I did have one pet peeve with the billing, as we would pay in stages. I would sometimes have to ask the office for a detailed bill because I wanted to track and see the price of my change orders. Also there were some things that subs did that I wanted to make sure I hadn't already paid for before I paid the sub. I shouldn't have to ask the office for a detailed bill everytime.
Overall I'm very happy with our addition.

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The quality of work was really high, and I have confident that we now have a well supported structure to our home. However, I think the cost was high, as well. We did have some confusion over final cost, with regards to a change order on our contract - which caused anxiety - however, in the end, we found a solution. Throughout, the communications were punctual.

I should have known from the start that this was going to go wrong when I paid the deposit and the agreement was the work would start in 2 weeks and the work didn't start for 4 1/2 weeks. What is worse is that in order to get any response after I had paid the $10,000 deposit, I had to call the roofing company that they contract with in order to get any response from Something Different. They said they were sorry but they had more work than they could handle at that point and they were going to be delayed. That should have been a major warning sign but I had already committed to the work.

David, the owner of the company, came out for the initial walk-thru. I don't live in the property so I was worried about tenant noise and inconveniencing the other neighbors which he assured me was not going to be problem. I also asked that I get a pretty regular progress report as I couldn't be there all the time and he responded with, and quot;please don't micro-managing us we know what we are doing.and quot; I was far from trying to micro-manage rather just stay informed since it was a large job.

As work progressed, slowly, on the project I received a call from the apartment below mine. He informed me that on a 90 degree day his air conditioning wasn't working. Turns out that David's team had removed all the HVAC units and hadn't told me or any of the other residents. For two days in the heat all the residents of the building had no air conditioning without warning. When I called David to express that I was surprised and that the residents were annoyed he yelled at me! He told me I was being unreasonable and was incredibly rude to me. In his defense he did call me a day later to apologize for yelling at me but as the customer he should have never yelled in the first place.

Another week went by and I received another call from another resident and it turned out all her patio furniture and window boxes and screens had been broken. When I called David to find out what had happened he said that it was a bunch of drunk people that did it, which I would have believed except my neighbors saw his construction guys lower debris onto her patio and saw the breaking of the patio furniture. When I had them send me a detailed email with the account of the actions, only then did David take responsibility.

Finally, after 3 weeks of additional work time, it was time to settle the bill. At the start of the contract we had agreed that everything would be paid by credit card. All the deposits and mid-payment were handled by credit card but when it came time for the final bill they wanted me to pay the credit card processing charge. I couldn't believe after $45,000 worth of work they were haggling over the credit card fee. When they finally agreed to pay the fees they sent me a and quot;revisedand quot; invoice which magically included an extra $3K of work that had not been there before. What's more is that I also asked them me to send me an itemized invoice showing the charge for each piece of work, because I wanted to know and I need this for condo records and they kept telling me that they would do this but I had to pay them first. Given all these charges that kept appearing on the bill, I would have been stupid to pay them first.

As for the work itself, most of it seems to have been done correctly, except that when I came to do the final walk-thru the seams hadn't been sealed correctly. After almost 2 months of work I would have expected them to show me a finished product but eventually the seams were correctly sealed.

Update: After almost a month of trying to settle the bill, when I asked about why a steel beam costs $7,000. David threatened that if I didn't pay him immediately that he would take legal action. He sent me a letter from his lawyers to pay him and that I would have to pay legal fees along with the roofing charges. All this for trying to gain clarity on my bill.

He actually did a lot of work for me. He structurally skid lined my house. He did an excellent job. I would recommend him to other people. He also kind of went above and beyond in some ways. He gave me an affidavit of what he found inside the walls of my house. There was some additional plumbing and electrical work that had to be done. They were able to get two other companies out the next day. They did a phenomenal job. The actual people that were there were great as well.

I've used them for years. It's been very good. Very competent.

When I bought my house in October 2012, there was a problem with a corner of my floor, in which termite damage had eroded the subfloor and it could not longer support its own weight. I have beautiful old hardwood floors, though, and I didn't want to replace or damage them--that was key. Of all the contracters I spoke to, Something Different was the only one that left me confident they could do the job without damaging the floors. They were a bit reluctant to take on such a small job, but we ultimately agreed on a price and timeframe. They were very punctual, doing the entire job in a day. Unfortunately, however, there were some stains left on the floor. I called Something Different, and they sent their guys back out. They assured me that it was only a temporary thing that would fade in time. They get a B grade because 11 years later, the spots still haven't faded. They didn't get a C, though, becuase the floor is still very sturdy, and because I was so pleased to be able to stand (and even jump) in that corner of the room.

Our experience with them was okay. They were quick and efficient. They cleaned up after themselves. There was a problem with condensation inside the wall after they did the work. It was not their fault, but it was probably foreseeable. It would have been nice if they had done something. So, we had to have the wall ripped out for the condensation issue to be fixed.

They were great. It was done correctly and on time.

My experience with David Robertson and the crew he managed was very productive from start to finish. David was able to work with me on a fairly major remodelling job for a kitchen and reworking the other living spaces on the first floor of an older row house on Capitol Hill. He helped me to rethink the spaces and made recommendations for new arrangement and design - especially for the kitchen. We shopped together for appliances and materials. The estimates were nearly right on target and the work was all done in a timely and professional manner. The house was cleaned after every work day and the crew was polite, on-time and the work was all done to perfection. I would recommend this company for anyone with a need for updating, remodelling or reworking spaces.

We stick with David because he is typically very responsive to questions and very honest about what makes sense - both in terms of being up to code and in terms of working on our modest budget.
His prices are not the cheapest in the world (or the most expensive - we've gotten estimates on both ends of the spectrum), but we feel that the work is solid quality. In the event that something is not up to par (i.e. after repairing flashing on the roof, it still leaks), he'll be sure that it is fixed free of charge and ASAP.

Nothing really stood out, it was neither bad nor tremendous. The quality of the work was good. They were professional. I will consider using them in the future.

They came recommended by other folks in our neighborhood. They were very responsive when we talked to them. The project was on budget and it was early. We actually left town and had a neighbor check on them while they did the work here. They did a good job, only they were so fast that they made the middle floor too high. By the time the floor was put in, it made the room too small. We can't have the room now as an extra bedroom. Otherwise, we have been very happy with them. When they leveled the floor they made it too high. They did it so quickly that we couldn't correct them. Otherwise, it was a really good job. It's a very minor thing. My wife says that the ceiling is too low to go so it's not that big a deal. They were very responsive and we really liked the guys that they used.

The contractor, David Robertson, was responsive from the start. He conducted an in-person visit and gave an estimate on the same day I called. The job was scheduled quickly and the contractor showed up on time. Generally, the work was thorough and of fair quality. However, it was clear that the carpenter lacked experience and he caused a bit of damage to the lockset while installing it. At the end of the day, the job was 90% complete. David offered to replace the damage parts and come back the next day to finish. I would use Something Different Contracting again because they offer reasonable pricing and are responsive, although I found the quality of work to be lower than expected.