
Serving Seabrook, NH and surrounding areas
Approved
In business since 1975
Free estimates
Emergency services offered
"We’ve done a lot of renovations on our 95-year-old house. We’ve been happy with contractors most of the time. The project at hand was a rebuild of our back porch, for which we obtained several bids. We hired Perry Brothers, who gave one of the higher estimates We expected them to be detail-oriented and do top notch work. Our experience was mixed. In most ways, they did great work. The construction of the porch is very solid, well-built and the guys showed up as expected. They had a crew of 2 or 4 guys on any given day. They installed supporting beams to shore up the structure and they worked in the sweltering heat. The project took about a month for construction. We had permitting problems that delayed the project by 3 weeks. We had to intervene to get the permits. We were not too bothered about that, although it did seem odd -- that’s never happened to us before. Our principal disappointment with the project was with the finish work. We discussed a complete rebuild of our porch, and for $45K, we expected a complete rebuild. Unfortunately, they left the porch ceiling on the second floor unfinished. We had the whole porch wrapped with Azek trim and composite boards & railings. The ceiling was left with bare sheathing (see photo below). They recommended painting to finish it -- that we paint it ourselves. That to me is not finished work. We’ve had several people over to enjoy the new porch/deck and they consistently comment, “The ceiling isn’t finished; are they coming back to fix that?” Well, the answer we got was, “No. It’s not in the contract”. They could have discussed this part of the project mid-build so we knew what was happening. How could a contractor complete a porch and leave unfinished work? It is exposed and doesn’t fit in with rest of the porch work. A second disappointment was Perry Brothers behavior toward the end of the project. We were asked to give final payment while there was still a pile of debris in the driveway, the permit was still open, the fence looked hacked up and terrible, and the porch had bare wood exposed. We had to demand the project was finished before final payment, which they agreed to. However, this is not the kind of interaction we expected from this contractor -- we expected them to manage the details. We had to gather more estimates from a finish carpenter to get the ceiling finished. It will cost another $2K to finish it off. We were so disappointed to have pay another person to finish the job and the added cost. Our friends ask if we would recommend them in the future and sadly, the answer is “No”. What I did learn from this experience is that you really need to review the construction contract with a fine-tooth comb and probably hire the architect (even for a porch rebuild). Also, we felt pressure to give the final payment (“we need to make payroll”); but we should have held back until we were completely satisfied with the job. Our bad. The owner, Bill, contacted us after we expressed disappointment that the porch ceiling was left unfinished with bare wood. He was responsive and offered to negotiate a solution to resolve/ finish our project. He asked what we wanted and that entailed a fir bead board ceiling and finished PVC trim to cover all exposed wood. Bill gave us the money to cover the costs to finish the project. He was very pleasant to work with and in the future would recommend working with him directly. Our back porch is beautiful and we’ve enjoyed using it this summer and fall."





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