Slater Construction Inc

unknown

Our driveway is on a pretty bad slope and was sinking and cracking. They brought in another outfit that put in a drain field underneath. They did great. They do things the right way, and I appreciate that.

This was a complex project involving specialty windows in an old building.  The project went well from start to finish.  The bid was very professional:  written, detailed and allowed for contingencies.  Along the way, any additional changes were similarly documented in a very professional manner, with written change orders, so that there were no surprises.  Slater devised and developed a specific piece of equipment to use to install these 5th floor windows that eliminated the rental of a swing stage, thereby saving money.  The workmen were competent, careful and easy to work with.  The contingencies for frame and mortar damage were generous and resulted in credits.  Slater's estimate for painting the windows was very high, so we used our own painter for a fraction of the price.  It was a complex project that went very smoothly with a wonderful result.

I had a very bad experience, and my building is still under construction.   I am still in litigation after more than three years  and can't say more at this time.

The contractor, Hal Slater made an excellent and complete presentation, which is why we choose him. We asked to see some projects he had completed. We saw two, both were in process. We commented that we'd like our home to be one that he could show. That has not happened! Why-- the workmanship! Not only was this a new experience for us, but a stressful experience because we loss almost everything in a house fire and were out of our home for over a year. Everything seemed to go alright until the sub-contractors came in. The painter, in particular, was a bully. He was furious because we choose a brand of paint that supposedly took him over budget. How would be know these things, Hal Slater told us to pick what we wanted. When we contacted Hal about this guy's conduct, he asked that we continue on with him as our paint contractor. As we continued the process of rebuilding, we found that everything was low bid, so we had an abundance of change orders to upgrade almost everything. There were lag times when no one showed for several days. Finally, running over the deadline schedule, we moved in. A year later there were problems. Hal called them "house settling". The second floor new build: the ceilings separated from the walls making spaces. Hal sent someone to camouflage the problem with moulding/trim that looked like garden sticks. The guy that did this work used a saw to cut the lengths, and a knife to whittle the trim to fit or not. I questioned him about the whittling and he stated "We were lucky Hal sent anyone to do anything for free." He took a knife and scored where the ceiling and wall meet. It took him weeks to do two bedrooms, a bathroom, and two additional open rooms. The place was a mess with plastic everywhere, everything pulled out, and him being careless with collectible artifacts. Before the guy finished, Hal came out to look and asked what I thought about it, and I told him it was a mess and I didn't like it at all. My husband had no complaints--I'm a woman, what do I know! The end results of that fix is, if the lights are off in one room, and on in another, you can see a stream of light shining into the room where the moulding is. They installed a ceiling fan in our upstairs room that appears it will jump off the ceiling when it is turned on medium or high. Did we mention this, yes. We have a window on the second floor that never closed from it's installation. Did we mention this, yes. I gave up! Everyone was pleasant when they were presenting for the job, or when we paid them as agreed; but when problems arose, there was agitation. Unbeknownst to me, I might be the client from h***--that paid them every penny they billed us without failure or excuses! Also, I had mentioned to Hal that if our house rebuild went well, I wanted a family duplex remodeled. That will never happen.

It all went very well. They did an excellent job. They were very responsive, and they stuck to their extremely detailed bid. Although we didn't come in on time, we managed to stay under budget.