OTERI CONSTRUCTION

The experience with Oteri Construction did not go well and is a sore subject. Much of the work went through extensive delays and when it was finally completed the quality was questionable. Ed ignored requests, he avoided phone calls, and he skipped out on a number of scheduled meetings. We didn't have front steps for several months and Oteri Construction didn't bother to provide a temporary set. Ed's crew was very loyal to him and wouldn't answer any of our questions either. In the end, we communicated with this company's attorney on several occasions, which resulted in credits back to us. Also, at one point, a criminal case was involved, but it was dismissed, because witnesses did not show up. We could have pursued this further, but wanted nothing more to do with Oteri Construction.

I called Oteri Construction twice and spoke with Ed both times about our residing project. Since our property was nearby he said he would stop by to view the house and follow up with me to discuss the project. He never followed up. We selected another company for our project.

Ed and his crew did an excellent job, performed on-schedule, and brought a high level of craftsmanship to the building process. Oteri does not have the lowest price for this type of work, but not the highest either. I can't say enough about Ed's ability to adhere to schedule and budget. He is also very amenable to changes and offering alternative options during the construction phase. And the quality of the workmanship is high. If there is a shortcoming it is the the lack of communication on a daily basis. It would be good to know, for example, when the electricity or water is to be turned off. But Ed was always apologetic and acknowledged that it wasn't always easy to predict exactly when certain tasks would be performed. However, he did generally stick to his timeline in terms of what would happen each week. We also felt that a bit more care could have been taken during the demolition phase in terms of covering hardwood floors and protecting outdoor areas. However, Oteri repaired any collateral damage we brought to his attention promptly and graciously.

Bad quality work. Does not take ownership of mistakes. Does not fix problems. Abandons job to do other projects. Poor wall work, and plastering. Cabinets did not fit because of the poor plastering job, Had to hire someone else to fix his mistakes. Installed faulty doors and would not admit to problem, or fix it. I would highly recommend hiring someone else.

I called Oteri who responded quikly. After discussing my needs for windows, he went away saying he would contact me soon. He never got back to me. I then checked him on Angie's List (I should have done this first) and what I found made me disinclined to try to get back in touch with him.

He seemed like a competent guy but we didn?t end up doing business with him because we liked someone else better. I thought he seemed knowledgeable and like he knew his business.

Great! He was on time, provided a very competitively priced estimate, explained options to do the work and how he would do it. Called back the next day to follow up and make sure we received the written estimate in our email, and to see what we thought. We agreed to move forward, and the work was completed 4 days later. We went with him because of his follow-through, his great price, and his simplicity. No frustrating contractors to track down, no issues with waiting weeks to get a written estimate. Done and done!

Ed Oteri did not give us the best price, but it was competitive. The week before the project was to start, Ed came and looked at the porch again. He went to the second level porch that was going to be demolished and noticed that there weren?t any cedar shingles on the INSIDE of the porch (where the deck was going to be). He told me that was going to cost extra because he hadn?t accounted for this. I found this to be very odd, especially since the lower porch was the same way and he had seen it several times. I let that one slide. The next week things were going fine. Oteri?s guys showed up on time, worked hard, and were actually ahead of schedule after 3 weeks. But during week 4 they stopped working and were only showing up a few days per week, sometimes not even for the whole day. One week they just did not come. The original estimate of 4 weeks ended up being closer to 15 weeks which was a major inconvenience for us. At first Ed was very responsive to emails and phone calls, but after this third week he was hard to get a response from. It seemed clear that he had started another project and was making my project very low priority. They left the half finished porch basically unchanged for 5 weeks. It rained very hard that spring, and they did not put plastic over the open windows, and they left the air conditioner power switch sitting in a muddy puddle. I called and emailed several times before they came and put plastic over the windows and lifted the power switch off of the ground. This was after weeks of rain had leaked into the room and the plaster and wood on the walls around the window openings had been soaked for weeks. They also left am overflowing dumpster in our driveway for weeks after the demo was complete, not to mention that lot of the contents of the dumpster was NOT from the demolition of my home and must have been from a nearby project. The end product did look good when they finished. They scratched a few composite deck planks and replaced two and comp?d me for others, which I appreciated. However a few months after they finished the plaster around with windows started to crack. I called and emailed Ed to come fix this several times, often with no response. He told me over and over that he would come ?next week? to fix this, but he never came. Our new room now has plaster cracks around the windows and doorway, I gave up on contacting him, and The external paint is already peeling on the trim in some places, and the internal trim painting was a bit sloppy and there is white paint on the door hinges, and weather stripping. We had three quotes for this job, two of them from Angies list, but we did not find Oteri on Angie's list. This was a lesson learned for us ? Angies List contractors have a higher level of accountability because they know that every job, no matter the size, will impact their reputation. Oteri construction, welcome to Angie's List.