Best Austin Handyman & Remodeling

We had someone come out to estimate our project the week of February 21. We never received our quote so we followed up on March 12, and then on April 13th. We have yet to hear from them on the second follow up. The first follow up, we heard back saying that the guy that would be giving us the quote is on spring break with his family, but once he returns, we should expect a quote within a week or two. We heard nothing after we reached out again on April 13th. Our fault for not getting more estimates for quotes from other companies, but this was a referral that we took seriously and would've used for many more projects down the line. We're just super disappointed and frankly bummed. This has set us back now more than months, but probably a year-plus with having to look for more bids from other companies and completely starting over. I had to check whether we'd rehire again or not. We are open to still hiring but really need a solid explanation and plan moving forward to keep this relationship positive as we feel that we've put in effort on our end. All we are asking for is to do your job, please.

Excellent! Every aspect from scheduling to the quality of work to addition to the project and final walk through. They were a pleasure to work with! every person that work on the project was an expert, courteous and professional. Highly recommended!

Austin Best Handyman did an excellent job on replacing two sets of sliding glass doors. Their workmanship was very good. They were timely with the installation and their service providers were friendly.

Great! On time- no surprises. They worked 5 days and it looks great.

Excellent!! very good, on time and knowledgeable

They were great. They were punctual, thorough and affordable.

Good! They showed up on time and very professional.

It was very good. From coming in, suggestions, feedback, do's and don't's, they were very helpful. They provided competitive bid. He showed up on time.

It was good. They are really fast and did it right.

Barrett does amazing work! He is friendly, knowledgeable, thorough, and insightful. When my job had unexpected complications, Barrett stayed significantly longer than originally-scheduled time to ensure my job was completed properly and that my gate functioned smoothly.

Barrett was very responsive, worked quickly, and did thorough work. This was an active leak, so time was of the essence to avoid more extensive damage to the room below, and Barrett did a great job.

We have used them before. The work is good. They have had schedule and communication issues before as well.We booked the work and paid over 2 weeks before. Late Tuesday July 3 they emailed to say they would not come as promised on the 5th. It was after hours when we received the email, the next day was a holiday. No contact from them on the 5th. I called and was sent to the “manager’s” voice mail. I’m waiting to hear from her.Highly inconsiderate and unprofessional. Caused us significant inconvenience by canceling last minute,

I hired this company to put in plumbing and electrical in a 10' X 12' shed in the back yard. The workers they hired were very unprofessional (some of them are daily labors, who doesn't know what they are doing). When they dug the yard to put in plumbing pipes, they destroyed everything in my back yard, such as sprinkler system, french drain pipe, and landscape etc. It was a total disaster. After that, they were unable to put those things back. The plumbing and electrical that they installed were a mess, some of didn't pass City of Austin code requirements many times, and had to be redone to pass code; example of lack of knowledge with regards to City of Austin code requirements! They arrange one guy each time to come to fix this mess...( one person came one day per week, sometimes no show for many weeks) The sprinkler system is still broken, and French Drain pipes are still unfixed since April 2017. It has been ALMOST one year. 1. The company wants you to pay a big payment first.They came to dig the ground very fast the next day, and then they stopped working,...and it comes with all kind of excuses; such as no workers available, kids are sick in the hospital, raining,...etc. The most bothering thing to me was - they won't work consistently until finish. They work one day and than stop for next many days. No consistency! 2. The workers they use are very unprofessional, lack of skills, so they made a lot of mistakes that messed up everything. 3. The owner, Barrett refused to contact with me because he gets annoyed and mad easily. He was the project manager at the beginning, and then towards the middle, he refused to response my questions. I started to call the company phone number again and again, and someone( Melissa) finally called me back and said, now she is my project manager. There's no professional companies do such thing like this. No professional company needs customer to ask who is coming to finish the project EVERY SINGLE day. And even when they said they arrange some workers to come, it end up didn't show up very often. 4. They didn't fix the sprinkler system but told me it was fixed. Because it was very cold(freeze) day, I couldn't test the sprinkler at that moment. I trusted them and paid them the last payment, When the weather got better, I tried to turn on sprinkler, found out it was still leaking at two spots; so sprinkler didn't work still. They also destroyed the French Drain Pipe in the yard. They hired one guy to come to put it back, unfortunately this guy didn't know how to do it correctly. When it is raining, the water gets everywhere in the yard...the drain didn't work. I called them many times to fix this two problems, so far no one comes. Now I am in the place I have to file a complain through BBB and Attorney General Office to get a guide to take them to the court. If you are looking for a good contractor, this is not the one. What's the most important thing when doing business with a contractor? Consistency, Good communication, Reliability, and Knowledge! For those reasons, I don't recommend this company!

My feeling in writing this review is deep and total ambivalence. During this entire project, there were moments of great satisfaction...and great frustration/anger. Let's start with what I felt was done extremely well: Jèsus - The real MVP of this project. This man absolutely deserves the utmost praise and respect for how great a job he did installing the tile for my kitchen/dining room floor as well as the backsplash near the end of the project. The pride he takes in his work shows and my friends/family were blown away at the pictures I showed them of what he did. If he's reading this, I'll recommend you to ANYBODY needing some tile work done! BAH Carpenter (name escapes me, my apologies) - That great frustration/anger I mentioned earlier? This man quelled some of it due to some incompetence on the part of the GC and crew chief (more on that later). Toluca Granite (countertops install) - I already gave them high praise on Yelp, but I'll echo those sentiments again on Angie's List. From the first contact, to the finished product, they were absolutely outstanding! With that being said... Let's talk about where they severely dropped the ball on this project: Drywall - The people they hired for my drywall work were HORRIBLE! They dirtied up my house without any consideration. Plaster footprints all over my bedroom floor, in my bathroom (they stepped ALL OVER my shower drying mat), dirt all in my tub, plaster chunks on my bedroom light switch, my towels, on the side of my sofa, and on the legs of my dining room table. Then, to top it off, they used my broom to SWEEP wet mud and plaster. Total lack of communication - THIS is why my grades in certain parts of this review is so low. Delays are a part of the game sometimes. I get that. But this was ridiculous. First off, there was a situation where my cabinets were delivered and supposed to be installed on 12/29. I came home early from work thinking I was going to see the crew installing the cabinets or already having them done. Didn't happen. Instead, I came home to a pile of cabinets all over my dining room floor and the pantry cabinet standing tall in my living room. So I'm thinking, perhaps they went to go get some more tools/materials and they'd be back. Didn't happen. I texted the crew chief asking what the status was on getting the cabinets installed. Didn't hear anything for nearly 2 hours and then when I did, received the equivalent of "we need to talk." Man is on the phone telling me that the cabinets (I spent a serious amount of money for) don't fit. You can only imagine my reaction to hearing that. It was a sh***y way to end the year and I wouldn't hear back from anyone until after the New Year holiday. Continuing, I get a text on 1/2 from the crew chief wanting to setup a meet with me, the GC, himself, and their carpenter on the cabinet situation. 1/3, the carpenter came through and stated that all but one of the cabinets CAN be installed after he laid out the scenarios for me. The one that couldn't? The GC screwed up on the order/measurement of the cabinet that was to be to the left of my stove so that one had to be reordered. Downtime? 2 weeks. The next instance is what pushed me over the edge: Countertops go in (they had to make two trips due to the delay in the aforementioned lower left cabinet) and I texted the crew chief for an update (1/22) and he tells me that ANOTHER cabinet was mis-measured and that the GC had to order a replacement. If I hadn't reached out, I wouldn't have known. I was ****** off beyond belief. I got so tired of "oh hey by the way..." finding out about these delays that I called the GC directly and voiced my displeasure of being kept in the dark about these screw ups. Downtime: approx. 12 days. Now, despite all of the venting, the delays, the mess ups leading to said delays, the results are amazing. The finished product I'm extremely happy with and it all came together beautifully in the end. It's everything leading up to it that wasn't as pleasant. Advice: tighten up on that communication. If something is wrong, let the customer know asap. If you're waiting for them to ask you what's the status update and THEN you tell them of what's wrong, it comes across as if you have something to hide. Too much money is being invested to keep people in the dark. Also, don't ever hire those drywall people. Ever. Again.

Excellent workmanship! I will call again!

I got the redesign plans, but I could not get them to re-engage with e to start work. They just went dark, after several followups. Weird because I liked their designs and probably would have given them quite a bit of business.

Great company and people. I will definitely use them again.

Designer came out and did sketch up but after several attempts to reach main folks to come out and give a quote and schedule the job, I gave up.

Great! All was left was for me to paint.

Went well, was drawn up as we decided. Received drawings on time and an estimate for work on time.

The workers seemed to think that I should not question the quality of repairs and their work quality went in a downward spiral. They attached gutters on carport with a piece of wire? The roof sheet metal was not screwed down as agreed to on quote. The down pipe on gutters was supposed to drain away from house, but instead they thought having it drain under the pier and beam foundation was a better idea?

I can trust them to show up. They're reliable.

Zac arrived right on time and got work. He did a lot more than I expected. My impression is that he is very fast, but not as meticulous as I am. He worked very hard laying flagstone pavers, putting down edging, and helping me with small landscaping jobs. He very fast and very energetic and he got a little ahead of me. I'll have to rework what he did. I will not use the company again, it was a fair experience, but I probably won't work with them in the future.

I paid Best Austin Handyman over $24,000 and I provided 95% of the demolition and materials and did all of the painting. The general contractor, Barrett Criscoe, said work could be completed without permits by a crew within 3 weeks beginning December 4th, 2017. This job did require permits and it took six weeks before the plans were right and accepted by the city during which I had no kitchen. Work began February 7th, 2018. It appears this nightmare won't be over until resolved in court. I fired them on April 24th. They did substandard work and charged me for things that were listed in my estimate, but that they either didn't do, did incorrectly, or very poorly. When they began work they would work for a few hours and then not show up for days or even weeks at a time. Barrett had the job foreman, Eric Gazur, and project manager, Nick Martin, do the electrical work that was supposed to be done by Andy Keil of Live Oak Electric. Those that did the electrical work appear to have been unqualified, unlicensed, and unsupervised. I found out that their work was not done correctly. Andy Keil refused to fix the electrical issues, telling me he had only been paid $500 to pull the permit as a favor to Barrett. Barrett wouldn't talk to me, handing me off to Megan Walker in accounting. When I asked for an itemized list of charges, she gave me a list with each item priced significantly higher than quoted in the estimate and insistence on charges for work never performed. They would not fix their electrical mistakes unless I paid them an additional $2800. A friend sent her son-in-law, a master electrician, to look at the electrical work they had done. He told me what they had done was unsafe and had been done illegally. I hired a legitimate and ethical electrician to fix numerous issues. So far I've spent $6,000 to correct shoddy work including corrected breakers in electrical panel, smoke detectors that were not properly daisy chained, loose wiring in attic, an unshielded live wire that was attached to the electrical panel, dishwasher and garbage disposal that were wired together into one switch, electrical sockets no longer working on one wall of the living room, two walls in the breakfast area, an outside light and outlet, the addition of required light in the attic and corrected wiring in attic to garage exterior light. Other contractors vented dryer from laundry room to exterior, repaired drywall and tile, and finished the other two sides of a beam I paid BAH to cover in drywall. They still need to hang the upper cabinets, move and vent the microwave, install toe kicks, shelving, and backsplash. I've already paid BAH for all of theseitems. For this extensive list of items to be completed or repaired Barrett Criscoe offered a refund of $1,000, which I declined. I've reported everyone involved to Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. I've been told that each person involved can expect fines of up to $10,000 and revocation of licensure. This fiasco has caused extreme stress and loss of sleep, affecting my health. They took advantage of my initial lack of construction knowledge. I documented everything in my personal daily log and recommend anyone using these people do the same., or better yet, staying far away from everyone listed in this review. My goal is to save others from going through what I have.

What I got: A contractor that at every step of the way led me to believe I was getting a completely new deck built to code, but was ultimately only intending to replace the surface of the deck and “shore up a few of the posts” to structurally fix the deck**. - The architects plans which I received on Dec 22nd were designed to essentially replace the same design / shape with a new structure and deck surface that met or exceeded the current permits / codes. There were pages that showed the difference in existing structure with the new structure (all the posts were in different positions). There were details on how the deck was attached to the posts etc. It was fairly detailed. At this point to be clear I was unaware of the role engineers played in this and what an engineers stamp was. - I had some questions regarding the railing system on the new deck and the pergola. I decided to swap out the railings to match the original hotwire. - I finally approved the plans on Dec 29th. BAH confirmed on Jan 3rd that they were going to submit for a permit that week. - I had been mostly exclusively dealing with the main owner of BAH - Barrett Criscoe via email (sometimes phone calls). Now Jonas Criscoe was handling the permit directly. It quickly became clear something was up because I was getting two different stories regarding the permit submission process. On Jan 27th, I was helping Jonas fill out paperwork (via email) for the permit. - The permit application was filled out digitally (not hand written). It was printed out and signed. The description of the project was “Replace existing deck with same. No increase or change in size of new deck from existing.”. The architects plan that was part of that permit included the structure changes as well as new deck. - I heard from Jonas Criscoe that there was a problem with the permit and they had to make some modifications. I repeatedly asked for the updated plans but did not succeed in getting an update. I finally heard from Barrett Criscoe and he assured me there had been no changes to the plans. - I received a photo of the permit receipt from Jonas. The receipt is dated Feb 22 2017. It includes the permit number. This can be used to look up your permit application online. - On March 13th 2017, the permit is approved. - On March 30th 2017, I was meeting Jonas Criscoe and two of their deck builders to "walk through the project”. At this meeting it quickly became apparent that something was not right. The builders were asking me how the posts should be secured. I repeatedly had to point out - look at the plans; I’m pretty sure it says to use concrete. When I pointed out that none of the existing posts were in the locations on the new plan - they said that the current deck was “completely safe” and they just needed to shore up some posts. They then stated the scope of the work was just to replace the top / decking. The railings would not change*** and surprise the pergola*** that would not be built due to not being included in the original work scope would now be untouched and remain as is. At this point I informed them that there was something wrong here / expectations were not being met and that I would contact them later. I told them to not proceed with building (which was due to happen the following Monday / April 3rd 2017). Investigation: On April 1st I started looking into the permit and trying to figure out what went wrong - an no, this is not an April fools joke. - If you look at the original application you can see the permit application that was digitally filled out and signed; has been modified with a change to the project description. It reads “*Only deck boards to be replaced. No structural components to be replaced or modified.”. I was never informed of this change. The “problem” that Jonas was referring to was that in the original submission if you look at the architects plan you can see a new structure / foundation. The city wasn’t going to approve that because there wasn’t a demo permit / and the plans were not stamped by an engineer. This “problem” was rectified by re-submitting the architects plan, with two of the pages removed (i.e. the pages with the foundation / structure changes). So, when you look at the later modified permit, you’ll just see a new deck (no new structure or foundation). As a layman that makes no sense to me - if you look at page 1 of the architects plan, you will see an index referring to pages that don’t exist. Why would someone in the permitting office approve that? - If you review the email exchanges and attached documents you can clearly see (IMO - without a doubt) that we were discussing a completely new deck. From the plans I was given to approve (which clearly show a new structure / foundation) to the emails discussing the pergola (how I wouldn’t have one on the new deck - that on April 30th Jonas informed me that the existing pergola would be left intact.) BAH / Terminating their service: I parted ways with BAH at the beginning of April. I asked for a full refund of the initial down payment ($6900); but only received a portion of it ($5244). BAH will claim this is because they paid for the architect and permit process - i.e. $1500 + tax for services that don’t get me what I need. - The architects plan was never stamped by an engineer and cannot be used as is. Most engineers ultimately need to redraw the architects plan themselves before they’ll stamp it. I never personally contracted with the original architect and unfortunately they won’t provide access to their CAD files that engineers need to make changes. - The permit is, as it currently stands worthless, I need to spend a lot of time / effort of my own to submit paperwork for revisions and also apply for a demo permit. In conclusion I paid $1500+tax for something I cannot use. I recently hired an engineer to provide the necessary stamped plans for the deck. This cost me $1800. Links to documents: Main email thread with BAH: [*** Link removed ***] Architects plan is ready for approval: [*** Link removed ***] Architect emails plan directly to me: [*** Link removed ***] Original deck foundation: [*** Link removed ***] Proposed deck foundation: [*** Link removed ***] Permit application: [*** Link removed ***] BAH explanation email after I demand return of money: [*** Link removed ***] Notes: ** Even though the submitted permit would not allow any structural changes. *** See main email thread for railings style and pergola discussion.