20 Jan 2020 I’ve gone through a near two-year period of recovery and home improvement effort following a July 2017 EF1 storm. This recovery effort ranged from immediate drying/demolition, complete re-roofing, extensive additional demolition and reconstruction of a major part of a historic home (two levels, bathroom, etc.). This involved a significant amount of Pella windows/doors, standing seam roof, oak flooring, porcelain flooring, extensive electrical and bathroom, etc. Beyond storm recovery, opportunity was taken to replace all windows in the house (all Pella material), complete residing (James Hardie), concrete and wrought iron work. Pretty substantial effort. In the end, a gross estimate valued between $350-400K all inclusive. Overall, a job pretty well done by all, in the end, it was just unnecessarily difficult to accomplish. After initial demo/drying, the newly architected design (which was a pretty miserable failure in and of itself) was competed between three similarly qualified candidates (and really only two in the end) and the final award decision went to BW Construction & Home Improvement of Roselle, IL. They served as General contractor for the majority of the job, providing general carpentry and relying on a myriad of their subcontractors, valued at well over $200,000, with add-ons and extensions exceeding $250,000 (incl some work beyond storm damage). I’m going through this effort of documentation in the hopes that no one knowingly has to go through the same/similar experiences that I did, one which really should have been very enjoyable and memorable. Instead, it was absolutely miserable for me. I’ll keep it relatively short here in the overview, and include much more in a detailed appendix (available upon request for discussion), including inarguable facts and pictures of evidence, since I’m 100% positive that every last little bit will be denied through unsubstantiated sales fluff and lies (sort of the same thing, more of the same)! I think that the primary take-away here is not necessarily about quality, although there is no quality function (quality control or assurance), as in zero, throughout the BW organization, and it shows, or about workmanship, although the workmanship varies from reasonably good on one day, followed by numerous days of terrible, absolutely unacceptable, workmanship. The inconsistencies are incredible! Numerous examples of evidence of what this all refers to is included in the appendix. The primary take-away is all about deceit though, dishonesty and defrauding the public. A pretty tough situation to deal with, but I think it’s very important for people to understand! Hopefully, by being aware of this, a similarly miserable experience will be avoided. The primary illustration of this, and certainly the most blatantly obvious, is BW’s claim of being a “certified” Hardie installer (Hardie has absolutely no idea who BW Construction is!). I based my decision to continue with BW (beyond the original storm related work) for the residing work based on their claims of being Hardie certified on their website. This dishonesty and misrepresentation cost me tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention the headaches, anxiety and frustrated sleepless nights to have the work redone by a truly qualified Hardie “preferred” contractor (they actually don’t have “certified” contractors, as claimed by BW), in order to recover from the loss of warrantee from Hardie that BW produced through incorrect installation. A real concern of mine is not really that for me, but for others. Whatever the percentage of BW’s work is siding, those customers paid for extremely substandard work. If you had the Hardie product installed (BW’s recommendation and actually an excellent choice), you’re out of luck if there’s some reason to leverage the warrantee in the future (ask Hardie, as I did!). It wasn’t installed anywhere near per the Hardie standards and is very likely doing serious harm to the home! BW is not only not close to being qualified for residing a home, they know absolutely nothing about the installation standards as established by Hardie for their awesome product! The BW work actually failed final Village inspection, leaving me with a bag of garbage to deal with (as a very small consolation, I’m glad to have withheld a very miniscule final payment, against their very strong insistence!). I encourage you to pay very serious attention to the payment vs progress schedule if you end up engaging them, their approach is childish and you lose (as is the case with several of their subprocesses - purchasing, subcontracting, etc. for example)! They left for good w/o calling for inspection, much less seeing it through. Now it’s clear why they did that! I get the feeling that that is a well-established standard process of theirs, after seeing it executed precisely the same, more than once! These problems were all unveiled after I contacted them to let them know of some unfinished siding detail in a very weather sensitive area of the house. This was just one of the numerous areas the final inspection deemed “unfinished” (highlighted in the appendix, the wording was actually “not complete”, by the inspector). BW repeatedly claimed that it would be “fine” by the lead carpenter and the owners. During the pursuit of a qualified siding contractor, and a real preferred Hardie contractor, innumerable violations to the Hardie installation instructions were revealed by multiple contractors, any one of which violated the manufacturer warrantee! The good news is that the work and rework has been completed, accepted by the customer and set to pass Village inspection. In addition, and maybe most importantly, was a very valuable learning experience. The bad news is that it took substantial personal effort, unplanned for, and very expensive, also unplanned for (tens of thousands of dollars). I don’t think there’s any room to deal with dishonesty in this area, and BW Construction has been at it, well established in their business culture, for a long time! Good luck on your project, it needs to be fun!