We hired Jake Bruton and Aarow Building for a large scale addition and renovation project. Long story short, the whole thing turned into a huge nightmare. He ended up at least 35% above the initial agreed upon bid. Then he walked off the job with no warning, leaving us to become general contractors and work with all of the sub-contractors to finish our house and take care of the additional 2 months of unfinished work, an incredibly stressful situation to be in. As for the budget, there were no written change orders, etc. documenting the overages - just him saying, after months of assuring us we were "in the budget", that we were $40,000 over the budget. Then, about 5 weeks later, saying, that actually it's like $90,000 over, and final numbers were actually $200,000 over the initial budget. The increased costs were not the result of changes made by us, they were almost solely the result of poor estimation by the builder. We came close to losing our house over his mismanagement of the budget. We were never notified of any increase in cost until he gave us these lump sum numbers. For this large of a project, he was unable to manage the costs. He very strongly pushed a type of framing called "advanced framing", promising us it would save us money. The framing, done by his crew instead of sub-contractors, took several months longer than it should have, resulting in a huge increase in labor costs. The inefficiency of his crew and lack of on-site supervision and oversight by the owner also caused numerous other items to have to be re-done - for example, one floor was re-tiled 3 times, another re-tiled 2 times, exposed ceiling beams were put up completely different than the plans specified and had to be re-done. As we've worked to finish the project, we discovered more items were done incorrectly - including shelf brackets not anchored properly, three spindles coming loose from the banister, and stair risers that came loose by hand. We feel strongly about posting this review in an attempt to save others from the awful experience that we had. His website states that the job isn't finished until the customer is happy, our experience was the opposite - we weren't happy with the work, the cost was 35% over what we planned to spend and he left us to finish it on our own with no warranty and no one to call noas problems arose with quality of work, now or in the future. Feel free to e-mail us at
[email protected] if you have questions or want to hear more about our experience.
Description of Work: Jake Bruton, and his company Aarow Building, were hired to do a whole home renovation and large scale addition on a home built in the early 1930s.