Creative Property Restoration

Stephen charged us 200 dollars to create a bid for the work. He had one manager come and get full details of the project. They estimated the job would take 2-3 weeks. We agreed that they could do the work over the course of a month or two. He lost that manager and hired another. We had to repeat the same work with the second manager to once again go over the details of the job. We had to take off from work multiple days to make the list, again. Then, he lost the second manager and became the manager of our job. Once again, we had to go through another process of defining the job. Over the course of about a year, the subs showed up to do bits and pieces of the job when they had time. After about a year and half, the work was still unfinished and Stephen refused to finish the work. He told me that we owed about 3000 dollars for the remaining work and would settle for about 1500 dollars and I would have to finish the job myself. So I got bids to finish the work and found that it would cost over 3000 dollars to finish the work ourselves. Naturally, we had to go to the BBB for arbitration. This took about a year and the job is still unfinished after about 2.5 years or so. The workmanship was ok in some places and very poor in others. We had to supervise the subs, which were usually not very good and lacked the proper knowledge to do basic electric or carpentry. No one was there to supervise the job. We could have easily hired all the subs ourselves and spent less time, had less aggravation, paid less money, done a better job, and finished within 3 months.

Louis, a staff painter, did 100% of the painting in my house. There were problems with each and every surface he painted - long paint drips, large areas of "bubbles" in the paint, extensive paint overspray on hardwood floors, windows, and countertops, spots of colored paint on white ceilings, frames, floors, and doors. The volume of these problems was ridiculous. Right away, I repeatedly voiced my concerns with Stephen. He always agreed with me, saying that these issues would be handled during the "punch list". He even told me one time that this process (cleaning up mistakes later) didn't make very much sense, but that's the way it was done. Louis was also responsible for any handyman work that was done - rehanging mirrors and blinds, drilling knob holes in new doors, rehanging doors, installing doors and drawers on new vanity cabinets, etc. The hardware used on light fixtures, blinds and cabinets was mismatched and uneven (screws weren't drilled flat against the wall); most of the existing doors do not "latch" properly after being re-hung and none of the new doors do (the bolts do not slide evenly into the strike plate), so my interior doors can now be opened with just a push, rendering the doorknob, and any lock, useless; none of the blinds or light fixtures were dusted off before being rehung - 2 light fixtures were re-hung without even having dumped the dead bugs out of the shade. 15 weeks later we moved in and CPR sent Louis to finish the extensive punch list. Louis dealt with all problems with a swap of the paint brush. That was not effective for the multitude of mistakes he made during the project. And, with every brush of paint, Louis left a spray of paint flecks on things that should not have paint on them, because, of course, he never, EVER protected anything. After a couple of days, I asked Stephen to send someone else to finish. He argued, insisting Louis was the best one for the job. I eventually agreed. Stephen came with Louis that first day, but didn't show after that. After 3 more days of the same poor work, I told Stephen that we had to find another solution. After a lot of back and forth, Stephen hired an independent inspector to determine what still needed to be done. Of my list of 152 issues, the inspector agreed that all but 18 were "Not In Compliance" with Texas State code and needed to be fixed. CPR hired a general contractor to do the work saying the work would take 2-4 days (see review of B&B Remodeling). Stephen, the GC, and I met with the first day, and I detailed my 3 rules which they agreed to. Within 3 days they had broken all of these rules. Four weeks later, they were still not done. CPR and I finally agreed to settle on a dollar amount for the remaining work, which meant I had to obtain more bids. This review only touches on the general aggravations in dealing with CPR. The pictures I've included may seem to show only minor flaws, but they were repeated on each and every surface.

It was ok but we would not hire them again. It did not go that well. Things had to be re-done.

Now that we are 6 months beyond completion we are very happy with the end results. However CPR generally over-promised and under-delivered longer (6 months vs. 2.5-3 months) and it was a MUCH more stressful process than we could have imagined. Stephen McNeil begins the process by "interviewing" his clients to assure good compatibility. This seemed like a good basis for establishing communication and a good working relationship-we were impressed. We confessed that there were aspects of the design details that were unresolved and would require collaboration with a design specialist. Stephen promoted CPR's "Design-Build" service, and advised that he could provide architectural design consultation. Great! Unfortunately this turned out to be nothing more than somebody coming out to make detailed "as built" measurements and getting the space into CAD (with a number of errors). Further "design consultation" was limited to working with sales associates at various vendors. Of course this was not a service provided by CPR, but one that any potential customer could obtain for free walking in off the street, yet CPR profited in the markup that they took on all purchases made for the project. The key concern, however, was in their execution. CPR gets high marks for consistency-unfortunately they consistently got things wrong the first time, and sometimes the second and third. Wrong custom window ordered (delay), lights all installed in the wrong places (numerous times), masonry done poorly. Incredible! As second time remodelers, we understand that mistakes and miscommunication happens. The key is the responsiveness with which the contractor will work to get them resolved. In this case it was always an uphill battle with CPR, starting with denial and deceit and progressing through repeated complaints and escalating from the job superintendent to the owner. I believe that a good sign of a good general contractor is the strength of his relationship with subcontractors. In this case, we observed several occasions where both the superintendent and the owner were imperious and abusive toward subcontractors, while we were easily able to establish good rapport and working relationships with them as they worked on site. As job progressed it became obvious that certain tasks that were part of the "finished" product (e.g. tile work, things not hidden behind sheet rock) would best be done by hand-selected subcontractors. Of course this added to the job cost. No regrets-we are living with the +/- of both. Bottom line; doubtful competence and integrity on the part of the job superintendent, poor communication between superintendent/owner and subcontractors and weak engagement on the part of the owner left us frustrated and stressed daily and disappointed overall. Anyone deciding to use CPR should plan to invest a great deal of personal time and effort into personally supervising and assuring the quality of the work.