BOLES CUSTOM HOMES LTD

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I like Shelley a lot as a person - she is easy to talk with, is enthusiastic about her job, and she gets good ideas flowing. She generally has a good group of sub-contractors and can recommend good people for work she does not cover with her subs. She's approachable and generally responds quickly to questions and problems. This was our first time remodeling and we bit off a LOT with our goals. We were not living in the home for most of the work which was helpful but also a little tricky from a logistics standpoint. I was told I didn't need to be around the worksite most days, but I often showed up just in time to answer a question that a sub-contractor had. If I hadn't just happened to be present on site, I feel that we may have had more undesirable results or work may have slowed down even more. Remodeling is a bumpy process and Shelley is very good at solving problems, which is her strength in my opinion. I do feel we could have had fewer bumps to solve if more pre-planning had been done, both by us and her team. I never had a written schedule or even estimate of time for each step, which was frustrating at times. Timelines change and shift so much but a general outline of which things come first, second, etc would have helped me wrap my head around which decisions needed to get made first. She made it seem as though we didn't need a bathroom designer because she herself had so much experience with the process of building and remodeling. We did enlist help from a decorator she recommended and this was a good step, but I feel now that hiring a full bathroom designer would have saved us money, time and headaches. Decisions and designs I made myself made that part of the project really rocky and I'm not sure my solution was the best one. We are happy with the quality of work done by her hardwood refinishers, hardwood installer, electricians, trim carpenters, and her recommendation for a wall covering specialist. The drywaller and plumbers were not great and I believe she has since parted ways with them, hopefully finding better people. She does all invoicing herself and I found a few miscalculations; I was glad I kept a good spreadsheet. Projects get complicated quickly and with so many contractors and dealers involved, I found it helpful to keep adding to our list of what was paid and yet to be paid. In the end, we are happy with the results, it was just a pretty painful ride to get to this point.

The entire work process was great and communication was excellent throughout.