Joe the Handyman

All of the jobs went extremely well. Joe is always always on time, and nice to talk to. He always does a great job, and has very reasonable prices. He even helped me clean my one rental property when he knew I was completely overwhelmed by my recent tenant eviction. And something I just learned was that Joe is an excellent electrician.. He upgraded my box from 100amp to 200amp. We are really happy with the job. We will definitely be using Joe again!!

Workmanship was so bad and dangerous that we had to hire another contractor to remove all of Joe "The Handyman" Scavello's work and rewire the house, again, from scratch.  JTH did not obtain permits, work was not to code, and house was left in a dangerous condition after he left (the new contractor fell through the ceiling after stepping on a floorboard in the attic that Joe the Handyman had not screwed back down.  Electrical Panel was not grounded properly.  15 amp receptacles were installed on 20 amp circuits.  Old wiring was not removed and hot, loose, wires were found in the walls by the new electrician.  These are just a sample of the 70+ deficiencies that have been identified.

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At the time of the estimate, I was given an approximate cost for material and labor and an approximate finishing time of 2 weeks.  I fully realize that things don't always go as planned so I was willing to work with renovations in the house for a month.  However, what I ended up having was over 3 months of "work" being done.  The reason for me putting the quotations around "work" was that I began the process by documenting pictures of each days progress - the framework going up over the course of several days.  However, after about 4 days of the framework pictures, I was no longer able to recognize what was being done each day.  After about a week of work and not much difference in my pictures (according to my untrained eye), Joe stated that he would no longer be working on the timeline (because he had based the price on 2 weeks of labor for himself and 2 additional men working in the basement).  Some days I had 3 people working in the basement and other days I had 1.  Some days I would be home all day and the workmen were at my house for a full day (9am-5pm minus a lunch break).  However, other days there was maybe 1 man at the house for about 2-3 hours total.  My concern was that even on days of a full work day, I had a difficult time recognizing what was being done.  Everything was explained to me but always included an excuse as to why things weren't as we had initially discussed or why they weren't moving faster.  The lumber store wasn't open, the wood glue had to dry, somebody hurt their arm and they were doing too many jobs at one time so couldn't all be at my job.  Now at about the 3 month marker I was getting very exasperated with having all my storage located in my living room.  Joe and his men were coming far and few between (one day on, two days off type schedule).  I requested that they give me a final day so that I could plan the move of my furniture back to the basement.  Joe then stated that he had to have wrist surgery and would not be able to come as consistently.  I had at this point made a checklist of the things that still needed to be done.  The shelf they had built over the pipes that existed had been cracked when they nailed the board on top.  That was considered finished.  They used leftover scrap wood to make one of the windowsills.  One window was completely boxed out (wood/sheetrock/etc..) and the second was various pieces of wood to make the sill (not even flush) and it was still concrete on the sides.  The doorframe to one of the closets was crooked so the door would not shut fully.  I also had requested and paid for the entire basement to be primed.  I am a single woman that saved my money to have my basement completed.  With several of these corrections not made, Joe stopped returning my phone calls for several weeks.  I had not paid a total of $300 of the total estimate for completion.  The work that I had to hire someone else to complete because I was unable to do it myself, was much more than that amount.  THe work that Joe did complete is decent.  However, I could never recommend him secondary to his ease with cutting corners to finish in a still untimely fashion, lack of response and overall inconsistency.

Joe and his guys were great all the way through the job. We sought out several contractor prices for our teenage daughter's bedroom renovation which we had been promising. Joe came in and ripped out the room down to the studs, put up fresh drywall, built in wall shelving, updated the electrical outlets, applied new moulding, remodeled a closet, put in new doors on the attic and her bedroom, painted everything fresh (walls, new moulding and trim), installed a new ceiling fan and a new laminate floor that we purchased. This room went from dark, dank, and dated to fresh, clean, and light. Our daughter loves spending time in her room now, thanks to Joe. The job lasted about a week and a half from start to finish.

Everything went well. He was very good. I would use him again.

None of the basement stairs were replaced and one is actually missing from the bottom. He was also supposed to tighten the banister and did not do that, it is very loose. This is nail and glue work and it was not done properly. I mailed him a check and he cashed and then did not complete the job. I do not live in the area and have been calling him but he is unresponsive.

Very professional. I have called him back repeatedly for work. I am very pleased with his work.