DAY STAR HOME IMPROVEMENTS INC

On the bright side, the roof itself has not leaked, and I know someone who has used them twice and was satisfied. But the quality of the work, and service, was very poor for us: 1. The crew broke the plumbing vent stack, adjusted the pipe to mask the problem, and reflanged the metal pipe over the now-lower stack. This caused a leak in our ceiling when it rained, and it took over a year and an expensive (ca. $800) repair to figure out what the problem was (finally resolved in summer 2009). We do not blame Day Star for breaking the stack, but for covering up the problem and not telling us; this was almost certainly done by a crew member without the owner's knowledge. (In fact it was Paul who first suggested it might be the stack.) Given the nature of the problem, it is simply impossible that the stack could have become broken at any other time than during the roofing work, and impossible that they no one realized it. We don't have gremlins in our attic, and it would have taken magical powers to put the pieces where they ended up without having the roof off. The amazing thing is that the leak didn't do more damage, since the plumbing stack was essentially dumping rainwater straight onto our ceiling. 2. The owner, Paul, instantly became defensive and belligerent when I called to inform him of the problem. He was previously very friendly, and had been helpful in trying to fix the leak. So I called in a friendly vein, assuming he'd see the issue and realize that his crew had left us with a leaking stack. But before I could even explain what I found, he immediately grew hostile and dismissed the problem, refusing even to consider coming out to see for himself: he was too busy (s, since this was the height of the recession building slump), and made clear he would never do it, period. He complained that we had not hired his son's plumbing outfit to check the problem--but we had tried, despite the obvious conflict of interest, and his son wouldn't return our calls. He also insisted that it was "impossible" that any employee of his would ever do such a thing. (How he could have such intimate knowledge of every last man in that crew is unknown to me.) Finally, he threatened to call the city inspector to look for code violations. (Even if the plumbing wasn't up to code, that's irrelevant: his crew knew they created a serious leak and covered it up, period.) His hostile and insulting behavior, in light of his previously affable, "man-of-the-church" self-presentation, was shocking to me, and unprofessional to put it mildly. I have never been treated that way by any business. 3. They attached both house and tool shed roofing to rotting wood, which obviously should have been replaced. At the time, we agreed that they would replace bad 2x4's and 2x6's in the toolshed--which they did not. We didn't complain, since it's just a toolshed and we figured we'd save complaints for anything big that might come up. (Lot of good that did us.) But we recently realized, when having the house painted, that they had nailed the roof of the house to a good deal of obviously rotted wood (eg, missing corners under the roof). We should have realized that would be a problem and asked them not to attach the roof to rotting 2x6's; but OTOH, a competent roofer shouldn't need the homeowner to point such fundamental things out. There weren't that many of them, so it would have been easy for the roofers to replace the bad lengths. Fortunately, our painters were able to replace the wood without bringing in another roofer, as they'd feared. 4. On 2 sides of the house, the roofing material does not come all the way to the edge of the roof, much less extend beyond it to protect it. This does not seem normal or healthy, though I'm no expert on it. Time will tell if it leaks or damages the wood. 5. On the other 2 sides, the roofing extends so far into the gutters as to create a blockage problem. I will probably need to cut it back. 6. The roofing crew was ok, though not very communicative. But we had to nag them to get them to sweep up the large amounts of debris on the ground from the old tar and gravel roof. They were very rough removing the old roof, with nails popping through the ceiling, though maybe that's normal with this sort of job (tar and gravel is heavy, nasty stuff).