iBuild

Never called

The first time we met Ray it was clear that he is a professional, straight-shooting guy. Easy to reach by phone or text, he was the most responsive contractor we had quote that first project. Now he's the only one we call. We couldn't recommend him enough - excellent work, flexible with our work schedules, great communication and advice, completes jobs quicker than anticipated and often ends up under quote! We'll be loyal customers for as long as we live in DFW.

Very well. Lots & lots of drywall repairs after having foundation fixed -- now you would never even know anything had ever happened. They removed the battered gutters and replaced all of the rotten wood & fascia, painted and bow it looks terrific. The crew was at my house a week. They were polite, considerate and professional and did a terrific job. We would absolutely call them again.

I cannot recommend this business. I contracted them to remodel a bathroom in my condo and it was the process from ****. Ray is knowledgeable though unfortunately there is little attention to detail from either him or his workers, nor is there sufficient quality control. This is sadly a symptom of the booming DFW market in which quality contractors are difficult to secure and can get away with producing sub-par work. The problems started with the sub-contractor that was employed to carry out the work. He was fine on a personal level, but the lack of quality control soon started to show and I put this down largely to grossly insufficient experience. There were issues with uneven tiles, they forgot to create a soap /shampoo niche in the shower, scratched floorboards, and a scratch on my $2K vanity. The issues were compounded when the subcontractor himself sub-contracted the job out to someone else without my permission and then went incommunicado for a week. A bunch of clowns were brought in who made most of the mistakes I mentioned and to add injury to insult they painted a wall the wrong color and then disposed of grout down my bath tub and caused a clog! They were so lazy that they couldn't even be bothered to dispose of the grout properly and it was sitting in a thick pile on my tub when I arrived home one night. There were also drops of paint throughout my place and even in my kitchen. No care whatsoever was taken. On top of it all they did not cover up the wood flooring when they were doing the grout work and the residue is now stuck in my floorboards and I can't remove the resulting stain. Apparently these sub sub contractors were a professional painter and a fencing specialist. What place do people like that have doing a bathroom!!!! Another issue that arose was with the wiring. My condo is an older one and the wiring throughout the complex is aluminum, which is something that most contractors will not work with. I was not aware that my placed was wired with aluminum wiring from the outset though it was brought to my attention by Ray within the first week of the project. It was suggested that I get the entire place re-wired given the potential risk of fire from aluminum wiring overheating, something that it is prone to doing. Given the extreme cost of re-wiring (in the ball park of $7K) I decided to go and complete the electrical wing myself with the help of a friend. I never even thought about asking for a discount on the initial estimate and was certainly not offered one either. I always felt like I had to watch over the work like a hawk and it's not a pleasant feeling like a tyrant when you ask someone to fix an issue just to bring the quality up to par. The final straw was when the subcontractor started gluing tiles down on the floor and the outside of the shower rather than using thin set. I only discovered this when one of the tiles became loose and I was able to observe the short cuts that had been taken before the final grout work was performed. It's unfortunate as most of the tiling work was done to an OK standard (though the contractor used grout lines which were way too big - yet again, another sign of inexperience) and the gluing only appeared to start at the tail end of the tiling job. I reported this to Ray and was met with a very aggressive tone and told that he was tired of me criticizing the quality of the work and that I should be willing to pay the full amount of the estimate i.e. no deductions for entire sections of tiles that were laid incorrectly, repair work for scratched floor boards, reduced workload from the electrical etc. I don't consider myself demanding and I had put up with numerous issues and delays so to be confronted with that was disappointing. I also had to take on the electrical component of the job myself, as I mentioned. Afterwards I sent him photos of the glued down tiles and didn't hear back for over a week before getting a text out of the blue telling me the same contractor will be there to fix the job. I don't think so!!! Quite a cowardly and unprofessional act from someone who didn't want to face the music and acknowledge the issue. It was clearly just an attempt to obtain the 2nd half of the payment I was owing and which they well knew they didn't deserve. I later found out that the estimate I was provided was well above market, though admittedly I was setting myself up to be screwed when Ray asked me what my budget was and I was dumb enough to tell him. What do you know? The estimate came in right on my budget which was about twice as high as it should have been. Do yourself a favor and take your business elsewhere. Avoid these clowns at all costs. p.s. check out iBuild's idea of thin setting below. They're so lazy and incompetent that they try and glue tiles down and can't even do that properly!