Green Hammer

I sent an e-mail and they quickly got in touch with me to schedule a phone call with a rep. A few days later we talked for an hour and he gave me a rough estimate and said he'd like to come for a site visit. And he did. He spent an hour talking about two different options with us and continually attempted to guide us toward what he would do with our situation to fit his tastes rather than what we wanted. Fine. We would be willing to keep the work going in the right direction but it got tiresome. He made a bunch of pictures and said he'd follow up in a few weeks with an estimate. We haven't heard from him since (and gave the project to someone else).

I'd worked with these people on a project at a previous house, and had really enjoyed working with them. I'd readily work with them again, but on a large project like this one, I would play a very prominent role as "manager" of my own project interfacing with them. Put everything you want into clearly composed emails, so there is a written track record. But I think that is just a common-sense good approach with any project such as mine. On both projects, the work was done with high quality. And all Green Hammer personnel were pleasant, well-informed, willing to readily share information about their work and helpful. GH made this big complex project relatively easy. There were just a couple things that went awry in the project... Wiring for a 2d floor smoke alarm was NOT connected to an available nearby circuit dedicated solely for all house smoke alarms, but was instead wired into another circuit in the house. I had mentioned that "smoke alarm" circuit in conversation with the GH project lead, but I should have been a bit more formal by putting that in writing in an email etc. Or I should have been present to go over this detail with the electrician myself. On both this and the earlier project, the intent was for re-roofing to also include fixing drooping roof ends which over the years had pulled corbels out of their positioning on the house exterior. And in both projects, this fix was not implemented as desired. In the earlier project GH roofing sub-contractors did make an IMPROVEMENT. In the 2d project that is the specific focus of this review, it's more complicated. Historic district restrictions prevented the most obvious approaches that might have been applied. After the roof was done and I mentioned that the roof end drooping hadn't been fixed, GH said that the mechanism they'd planned to apply didn't seem workable after they had the roof off. So apparently there was simply a decision to make no improvement at all. If I were to engage GH for similar work again fixing drooping roof ends, I would be VERY tenacious and visible with them about this roofing "fix". I'll repeat however that my review is very positive and I'd work with GH again. But it makes sense to play a strong "project manager" role yourself while interfacing with them. Maintain knowledge and clear written communications about your details, and follow up to make sure those are understood and implemented. But I think this would be true in EVERY big project.

I was very happy with them, they were proffesional, and very clean. I would recommend.

This was our first big home renovation on a newly purchased 1926 Irvington house. Greenhammer was very professional and responsive from start to finish. They provided excellent design-to-completion guidance and overall the complex project with many moving parts was finished without any major setbacks or headaches. And honestly, this was more than I expected. The project schedule and pricing was very transparent and changes we asked for half way through (for example, we decided to remove the chimney), were quickly accommodated. Overall I thought we thought the subcontractors did strong quality work and Greenhammer project lead stepped in immediately whenever there was a quality issue. I felt they had our backs the whole time.

Very well. Very complete and timely. Although we did not use them in this project I wouldn't hesitate to hire Green Hammer in the future.

It went great. They did everything I needed done. I would recommend them to others.

They were excellent! They pay attention to detail. We hired them because of their focus on energy conservation and green products.

I liked that they were local and that they were green. There was kind of a mix up because the guy who was in charge of our account quit in the middle of it, so there was this kind of overlap where there wasn't any work done for three days and no one knew what was going on. They made up for it and gave us a discount. They were pretty professional and did a very good job. They had some very good artisans and people that knew what they were doing. They were also here on time.

Not too well. They were nice enough when we discussed the problems, but they did not deliver. I think their reputation is overinflated.

Overall they did an excellent job. I will definitely use them again.