Tim Owen Construction Inc

Professionally.

unknown

Tim has done a lot of work for me prior to this job and he and his crew earned my respect and confidence. I am writing this review a year later because my husband was ill and passed away after the job was completed. My house was built in 1925 and presented many challenges. Tim is very well educated and top notch in the planning and quality of work he does. He was very committed to improving energy efficiency which this side porch sorely needed. He also has an excellent eye for maintaining the original integrity of an old home. In this instance he spent some time driving around our neighborhood looking at other side porches common to our area and time period. Once his idea was born he shared pictures with me and thoroughly explained his design and plan. He had a better feel for what would enhance my home than I did. It was a difficult time for me dealing with my husbands Alzheimers Disease. Tim went out of his way to always greet my husband and treated him in a very dignified, respectful way. Tim was extremely professional but also one of the nicest people i have ever worked with. I also felt great comfort working with Tim's crew. The carpenter, electrician, plumber and HVAC people were all top notch. I trusted all of these workers and never hesitated to leave them alone in my home. All required inspections were accomplished with no problems. Everyone showed up to work on time as planned. They left my home and yard neat and clean. I had some prize old Camellias that lined the perimeter of this project. Tim and his crew took great care not to damage these bushes. The project was completed in a very timely manner. Tim provided a very reasonable estimate and provided good records with all his billing. The project ran over by $6,000.00 mainly because of things I added like the built in shelves and some other detail work. Tim discussed this with me very honestly and waited for my ok before he proceeded. His accounting and detailed billing helped me feel good about the extra cost.The finished project has greatly enhanced the beauty of my home and has added to its curb appeal. This room is now one of my 2 favorite rooms in my home; the other room being the back porch he remodeled for me earlier.

Tim did an excellent job remodeling our 1940's bungalow. He built an room addition upstairs which will be a master bedroom and bath. He took down the old wood siding and put up Hardy Board, took out the old windows and put new windows in, knocked down walls to the den and dining room to open up the den/kitchen area and extended the kitchen /den area to make it larger. We took our time working through each project. His crew was trustworthy and efficient. I would recommend Tim for any construction remodeling big or small.

I would highly recommend Tim for any remodeling project big or small.

This is the first negative review I’ve ever written. I don’t like having to do it but I feel it’s my responsibility to share my experience so that others can make an informed decision as to whether to use this contractor or not. Our repairs are still on going but I felt I needed
to finish this review and move on.
We hired Tim Owen to remodel our small master and hall bathrooms in February 2013. We fired him in April 2013, after continued arguing over his responsibility for damages or sub-par work that he or his workers performed and a final incident where I felt he raised his voice at me and behaved in a manner that made me feel intimidated and bullied. I have included several photos to highlight his work.
Tim verbally agreed to a four-week completion before we got started. We had to repeatedly ask him for a contract and when we got it, it stated six weeks. It was 9 weeks when we fired him and he still wasn’t finished with the job or several repairs that he refused to
take care of. Up front, he said he would have to charge substantially more to do the two bathrooms back to back so that we could still have a working bathroom. Instead, so he could do them both at the same time, he set up a temporary shower in our basement that I paid $950 for and he got to keep the shower and pump. It was very uncomfortable, tiny, cold, no privacy, for 9 weeks.
When we interviewed Tim, he appeared to be knowledgeable, pleasant and eager to do our project. We’ve had a lot of remodeling done in the past before we moved to Charlotte and it was always a good experience. We were looking forward to nice, new bathrooms. Tim had the bathrooms demolished right away but things changed quickly as he had to stop work because he didn’t have his crew lined up. As time went by, more and more problems cropped up. He argued that he wasn’t responsible almost every time something was damaged or didn’t go right.
He handed out my key to a drywall crew because he often wasn’t showing up to let crews in. Some of the crew he had just met. I expressed my concern about safety for my daughter and myself and Tim mockingly dismissed me and said that we were just fine. Several times he texted or called me (I saved all his texts, voicemails and emails) to ask if I could be home to let workers in. He had started a bigger job somewhere else soon after he started our job and just wasn’t showing up at my house as often.
He poured self-leveling concrete in our master bathroom floor but evidently neglected to seal all the holes or cracks in the subfloor. The liquid concrete leaked down through the subfloor and came out the recessed light fixtures in the ceiling downstairs and puddled on the downstairs tile floor. (photo 1, photo 2) The concrete also ran down the interior walls downstairs and out from under the baseboards onto the tile floor. He seemed irritated that I texted him over the weekend about it and asked me to ask the tile guy to fix
it. In the end, he cleaned the concrete out of the light fixtures and his tile guy removed the puddles of dried concrete on the floor and said that it was good. However,now there are problems with the ceiling downstairs where the concrete leaked out. There are nail pops, lumpy areas and stains.
The mess and dust was outrageous…much worse than any other remodel we’ve ever had done. It affected my daughter’s asthma terribly and I had to have a crew come in to clean ($500.)
He was supposed to use all new electrical switches and outlets but I walked in and his electrician was re-using my old switches and outlets. When I called him on it, Tim had the electrician switch out some of them, one that wasn’t even working anyway.
He used what I believe was outdoor decking wood to replace an interior windowsill in one of the bathrooms. It split badly within a few days of installation. He smeared fiberglass Bondo on it and intended to sand it. I told him he shouldn’t use that material inside because if sanded, it would spread fiberglass particulates all through our house. He scoffed at me. He never did finish that sill. (photo 3)
He splashed grout striper on my quartzite kitchen counters and it etched the surface. It was quite a fight to get him to pay ($150) to have someone come and polish the countertop. He was using the grout stripper to try to salvage the newly installed tile floor in
the master shower. His tile guy used a mortar like material to form the shower floor and I’m guessing some got down the drain. It backed up when they tested the drain. Tim’s plumber was using a metal rod to pound and scrape the drain to get it open. He told me there was something hard as a rock down there. We never had problems with any drains before except the kitchen sink at the other end of the house. Tim brought out a handful of hair and made a comment about that being the cause. The backup caused the grout to be stained. It was a HUGE battle to get him to fix it. He claimed the hair caused the problem. I purchased the grout stripper but it didn’t work. Finally, he agreed to have his tile guy remove the grout with a saw and re-grout it.
He backed in to one of my matching shrubberies at the end of our driveway and broke out the center of the plant.He had been the only one in the driveway that day and when I asked him about it he pretended he didn’t know anything about it. When pressed further, he admitted he had done it but just said, “It’ll live.” (photo 4)
He spilled purple pvc pipe glue on the tile floor downstairs and never told me about it. I had to ask him what happened and he said that he’d fix it (he did).
The drywall job was awful. There were wavy walls, especially behind the vanity and where the walls met in the corners and the ceiling. Lots of ridges and grooves in the drywall, big nail pops and gaps around the recessed light fixtures. Tim didn’t include painting in my contract but he really pushed me to hire his painter “because he was so good and since he worked for Tim, there would be easier communication”. The painter was terrible. He left huge, thick roller marks all over the walls. He came back several times to try to fix the walls, but since it was latex paint, they couldn’t be sanded. Tim told me that the drywall problems were the responsibility of the painter and thus not Tim’s responsibility. The painter had nothing to do with the drywall installation but he attempted to fix the walls twice but wasn’t successful. It was always a big argument about anything that went wrong. I had to hire another company to fix the walls in the end. (photo 5)
Both tile showers already have several big cracks in the grout and I had to recently have that repaired. They’re at the floor and up the side walls. (photo 6, photo 7) There are other things I could list here, but this review is already too long. Ultimately, I didn’t feel
I could trust him and felt worn out from having to argue about his responsibility every single time he damaged something or did poor work.
The day before we fired Tim I reminded him that I was having another company come do some work that was outside his contract. I had special ordered two mirrors and they needed to be hung over the master bathroom sinks. I didn’t trust him to do the job without damaging something and he always argued that he wasn’t going to be responsible for any damages. I also was going to have a closet door installed in the office and a light fixture installed in the master bedroom. He was fine with me having someone else do it. My impression was that he didn’t want to mess with it. The other company came the next day. Tim showed up just as I was finishing up talking to the countertop repair guy in my front yard. Tim roared up in his truck and jumped out and yelled, “How dare you bring
another company in on my job!” The countertop fellow and I looked at each other and I told Tim that they weren’t working on his job and I reminded him that I had told him as recently as yesterday th

Tim worked hard to maintain the character of my old house built in 1927. The outside detail enhanced the overall structure of my house and the inside finished room was beautiful. Tim provided an accurate estimate that was easy to read. He was very prompt and reliable. Tim and his team of workers were a pleasure to work with and very neat and clean. Everyone spoke good English and were easy to understand. We have 2 dogs and my husband has Alzheimer's, but Tim treated them like family. Tim is very knowledgable about building codes and building energy efficient structures. He has an artistic eye trained on enhancing the details of my old home. When he replaced the 3 windows he made the detail match other areas of my home; details I had never noticed before. If it didn't look right and up to his high standards, he fixed it. I am now planning another remodeling project because I am so impressed with the quality of Tim's work.

See above