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.