MARINO GENERAL CONSTRUCTION

We purchased an older home understanding that it would need substantial work. We budgeted over $100,000 for the renovations. We met with Marino Construction, where they assured us that they have experience completing high quality jobs. As an example, we were told a number of times that Marino has built "million-dollar homes in Ocean City." The person we met with was knowledgable, the pictures of completed work looked nice, etc. We hired this company to build a 300 foot, single story addition; install a new kitchen; cosmetic make-over of two bathrooms, and to paint the interior. This project, which by all accounts should have taken somewhere in the range of 3 months, took closer to 7. A number of the delays can be attributed to tha fact that on multiple occassions, they decided to just not show up. Further, during the 6+ months, we experienced the following: *Drunk sub-contractors installing the kitchen. Result - crooked tile floors, uneven cabinetry, leaking sink, mis-placed lighting, and "random" switches (meaning, light switches that were installed for some reason, but have no purpose).The cabinetry was also installed incorrectly. I had to force them to do it over (they actually resisted that idea). Now we have multiple nail holes were the original nails had to be pulled out. *Heating system was supposed to be on a separate zone. Instead, the addition and the original house are on the same zone. The baseboards that were installed were not done properly, and they are uneven and look terrible. *Paint job - by far the worst painting I have ever seen. In several rooms, they didn't even bother to sand the spackle before painting and simply painted over the rough, unsanded seems in the drywall. In some rooms, no primer was used, and in others, the ceilings were painted with primer only. *Bathrooms - look about as good as they did before the work started (that is not a complement). I addressed the drinking with GC, and nothing was done about it. I also included a number of the issues above in the final punch list, but few were resolved. In fact, while fixing the damaged kicthen floor, the GC left to deposit a payment I made to him and did not return for close to a month to complete the floor. Overall, if there is a corner to be cut, it will be cut. If a choice needs to be made between doing something cheaply and doing something correctly, Marino Construction will choose cheap every time (at least he did with us.) A majority of the issues above could have been avoided had there been any oversight at all. Instead, the job was run, for the most part, by unskilled laborers who had no idea what they were doing. My advice: save yourself the pain we experienced...keep looking.