Lammer's Hammers

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Tom had contractors out on Saturday to cut out the opening for the new door and frame up the new/old areas.  They were punctual and friendly.  The old opening was sealed up and the new opening was cut out of existing brick.  The contractors cleaned up the job sight and were gone.  Before they left, the contractors covered the new opening (which exposed my garage to everyone on the street, due to no door being there) with plywood to keep it safe.
The following day, the garage door worker came out and moved the garage door from the old location to the new location.  It took a long time (about 8 hours), but he was dilligent, friendly, and professional.
We had forgotten to place the final "finishing details" in the contract, but Tom offered to split the cost with me.  He covered labor and I covered materials.  The following day (Memorial Day), his contractors from the first day showed up again and installed the finishing pieces on the house in a very short amount of time.  They helped move the remaining materials into the garage and cleaned up the work site.
Working with Tom and all of his associates was an extremely positive experience.  Tom is a no-nonsense guy and was more than capable of taking care of any problems that arose.  He scheduled everything to be finished over Memorial Day weekend and worked with an **extremely** short deadline and notice.

HORRIBLE! Tom Lammers down talked us all the time. Would not fix anything. Left us with numerous Liens on our home. We paid for bills to him for the vendors and never got the supples/materials. Had to Double paid numerous vendors! It was absolutely the worst experience of my Life. I am still fixing things! He fired/laid off our Project Manager half way through the project. Did not replace him. Had to deal directly with him. Nightmare! Stay as far away from this company as you can. Don't trust anything they say.

HORRIBLE! This Company RUINED my home. The work they did was beyond horrible. Vendors were not pd and he is the nastiest man I have ever met. We trusted him and he royally screwed us. The work he did was so bad. I would not wish this company on my worst enemy. All my windows and sky lights oversprayed, floors that were not floated and we had to tear back up after he laid. Electric work a joke. The trim work was so bad. I could go on and on. This was a nightmare for my family. I would not recommend this company to anyone. they are so so BAD!

It was the worst experience of my life. They took all our money. Everything that was to be done was done either wrong or of the cheapest quality. We have floors that were not floated (contract stated to be floated), every window(37) and 3 skylights were paint oversprayed, electrical problems in which could have started a fire, plumbing valves put upside down causing water to come through ceiling. We had to pay vendors twice for several things to avoid additional liens on our home. The list is extensive. We tried to do a settlement to get rid of him but he breached that too. I would never ever recommend them. We went through complete H***.

There was a complete lack of customer service, competence, or responsibility by this firm from the beginning. The company owner, Tom Lammers, begins as your project manager. He is arrogant and very confrontational to the home owner. He had never even read my contract and would argue with me about details only to later agree to do something without an apology for his negligence. If you complain, he threatens arbitration and tries to intimidate you with stories of past projects where he won arbitration. He is verbally abusive and eventually my project was handed to a new project manager, Michael Ackley. Mr. Ackley basically lied to me repeatedly while supervising my project and never showed up to the job site for days at a time. An example of their incompetence and arrogance was the construction of a simple brick fireplace that was to be decorative and match existing brick on our home from the 1940's. I was shown two badly damaged brick examples by a Hispanic gentlemen who could speak a limited amount of English. This brick subcontractor told me that he had searched everywhere and that he could not match my brick exactly. These samples were the best he could find. I asked for guidance from Tom who gave me nothing. I asked the brick contractor to search again. I was told that my brick simply didn't exist because it was old and unavailable. I agreed that if he could add another color brick to his samples that maybe we could do it with a similar not exact match. I kept asking Tom for guidance and received none. They kept telling me that my old brick was no where to be found around Houston. Then without warning and within a four hour period, the brick workmen arrived and put up the fireplace with no one supervising the work from Houston Structural and no one who could speak English. When I called Tom, he was having surgery and had no one managing the project for that day in his absence. He told me not to worry and that if it did not match, he would fix it the next day. I tried unsuccessfully to stop the work, but the workmen continued and said that they could not understand me. I frantically called Tom again, but he did not answer. I called the office, but the receptionist did not give me any direction. Before this issue, I was told to only call Tom and no one else because he was in total control. As a result, I ended up with a fireplace that did not match the existing brick. Tom responded the next day with the statement that I approved it and it was too bad for me. He never came by to look at it the next day. I placed a tear filled call to Mark Hamilton. He and Michael Ackley came to see the job and agreed it did not match. However, they blamed me for not calling one of them. I told them I was instructed by Tom to call only him. At this time, I had met Mr. Ackley two or three times in passing and did not know him well. Even other subcontractors agreed it did not match. Tom's answer to my problem was simply that there was no brick to match so I would have to live with it. In addition, I approved it; therefore, it was entirely my fault. So I decided to investigate myself. After making a hour's worth of calls and emailing photos/visiting 4 brickyards, I was able to find the exact match for my old brick. I was able to tell Houston Structural the name and color of each of the three bricks on my existing home and who had produced it in the past and where to find it. There was one type of the brick in plenty at one of the brickyard that Houston Structural had said was checked. However, after a month of waiting for them to investigate the problem and pick up samples of the brick I found for them, Tom answered my complaint by saying that I approved it so it was my fault. I responded by stating that no one had truly looked for the brick and that I had found the brick in Houston from my own investigations on the phone. His response was that I should take him to arbitration if I didn't like his answer. We eventually gave in to their lack of responsibility and painted the entire house to hide this problem with the fireplace. We were able to get Houston Structural to pay for only half of the additional cost in order to keep the job going. This example was repeated with everything they did. They complained to subcontractors that I was difficult and emotional. They told me that I could not talk with the subcontractors even though they were not present to supervise the job. They even called me a liar to my husband who had to keep intervening to deal with them because of their abuse. There is not one thing that their staff did right. I would have to make them redo most jobs because of poor quality or mistakes. Their handy person could not even put on a small piece of hardi plank on my home without it being crooked. I was lied to regularly by Michael Ackley and would have to catch him in the lie to get results. John Sullivan was also a project manager at one time and I overheard him telling a carpenter to leave a mistake and see if I noticed it. Their answer to questions would be to simply not answer or ignore them until I stopped paying. We had to stop the job twice because of problems. I can only hope that someone will read this and stay away from this firm. Please do not make the mistake I did. There is another report on this website about another one of their projects. When I read it, I cried because I knew what that person was talking about completely. I had only wished that I would have read it before I hired them. Beware of these guys!!!

Not good. Their design work was great and the original customer service was good, but once the project actually got started things went downhill fast. The company is owned by a guy who thinks he knows better than you on where things, such as a/c return ducts, lights, cabinets, etc. should be installed in your home (which they refer to as the "job site"). After about two months of demo and construction, it got to the point that I didn't want to come home in the evenings because I knew that something would have been done incorrectly. For example, despite the fact that I took several hours off of work (don't try to get them to meet with you after hours) to discuss exactly where we wanted about 20 6" recessed can lights to be installed, I came home the next day to find that my ceiling looked like a putt-putt golf course with lights installed everywhere but the places we marked. When I was finally able to speak to Tom about what happened (don't expect him to return your phone call until the next working day), he said that they decided that it would take too long to install the lights where we discussed, so they just put them where it was easiest for the electrician to reach them. Same story for the return a/c ducts. The final straw was when we came home in month 6 of the project to find a flooded closet because the a/c subs had installed the drain line GOING UPHILL and they didn't use pipe sealant. On top of the shoddy work and lack of any respect whatsoever for the customer's home (a.k.a the "job site") they would submit invoices for work not performed, fabricated our signatures on change orders, and generally kept such terrible records for the actual costs that to this day I don't have a really good idea where all of our money went on this project. In a nutshell, I will never use HSI again, and would not recommend them to anyone. Ryan Haas was our main contact person, and I wouldn't trust him to cut my grass, much less do another project on my house.