Hugh Morren

Hugh was professional, on time, and responsive. He performed above and beyond what was asked, including additional texture work that was needed which we hadn't noticed.

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This is the fourth time I have hired Hugh in the past few years. He is exceptional and does exceptional work. You can always count on him for punctuality, quality work, high work ethnic, finishes on time, finished product is always perfect. He is great to work with, and I recommend him to everyone I know. When it comes to home repair and remodeling, he can do it all with the best quality anywhere.

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Excellent finished product! The list of materials he gave me was accurate and exact. The work area was cleaned up each day when he left and there was clear communication during the entire project.  I work during the days, so  he had access to my home most days without me there. He was completely trustworthy and honest. Easy to work with and kept me updated on the progress and any issues that arose.  We were working with old plumbing, so of course, I needed to call in a plumber.  He's honest enough to say when something is not his specialty. I found that very refreshing.  I would definitely use him again!

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Hugh got our information, and submitted a professional and complete bid in a prompt time line. He met for planning sessions with Dental Suppliers to make sure he could fulfill his commitment. Hugh always arrived on time, and did the work that was planned for the day, if possible (We appreciated his planning). Hugh and his crew thought the process through before starting the day. He would let me know what the next workday was going to involve, so that we could plan if necessary. He helped with all preparations  and moving things around & especially when a project was going to be intensive (removing a major wall). He was flexible with the many changes that were required of any remodel, and yet always stayed on or ahead of schedule. He was prepared with proper tools and came through with supplies necessary to get the job done. He insisted on qualified plumbers & electricians to do their part.  When obstacles arose, Hugh would immediately consult us and we'd brainstorm to solve the issue. He made suggestions to save time and money without compromising the project. He stayed in a routine that we could depend on. That is a "pet peeve" we have with contractors. Hugh's routine made us feel confident that the project would finish on time, on budget, and that the remodel was flexible enough to result in the final product we needed. Hugh is a positive, happy person who laughs a lot while working. He put the other contractors at ease, and kept us all looking at the bright side. He motivated his crew to do their best. He was diligent in giving us invoices that were complete and correct throughout. He even rescheduled his new project when we told him we needed him to be there when the equipment arrived. He had to spend that day correcting designer's mistakes and reworking a ceiling support to keep us on schedule.  Amazingly, he was positive throughout the "mishap" and kept us calm.

Who wouldn't want a contractor like Hugh? My concern is that he is a busy guy, and can only do so much. I like that he keeps his life balanced so he doesn't burn out( I'm a work-a-holic/ perfectionist). His routine and sense of humor as well as precise planning, showed me a better way to take on these big projects.

   Thank you for letting me share our success story with my new forever contractor, Hugh Morren!

Let me first say that Hugh is Service-minded. I've read his negative feedback and I did not have these experiences. I believe that many customers have an "I need the best job at the lowest price...and I need it right now." Look, I get it that people need their work done ASAP, but I can assure you, if a provider is excellent he/she will be booked weeks out. Hugh is this person: Excellent. If he can fit you in earlier, he will. But he will not do average work, and certainly not mediocre! So, Hugh is dependable and a craftsman. Is he the cheapest? I don't know, probably not. If you want cheap, then you want average or mediocre quality. If you want great fit, finish, quality work, Hugh Morren is your man!

We were in a very tight time crunch and Hugh was able to fit us into his schedule even though he got sick and was delayed a couple of days. My husband ended up putting in about 10 hours of work with Hugh and after hours and we are somewhat disappointed that we didn't get a discount due to this, but are satisfied nevertheless. We had to leave on a previously scheduled vacation, so haven't yet painted the room to see the finished project, but have faith that it will look as great as Hugh promises!

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Wow!!  Hugh is such a pleasure to work with.  He walked through the whole process with us and made sure we were happy every step of the way.  He was always available when we called and was very professional.  We felt comfortable enough with him to leave him alone to work during the day while we were at work.  Just a great overall experience!  We will be using him again to remodel our bathrooms and paint the rest of our house.

The project went well, Hugh strives to insure the customer is completely satisfied and won't quit until they are.
Hugh is great to work with, answers the phone or calls you back ASAP, unusual in this day & age.

They were extremely professional. The communication went well beyond above my expectations. The work was phenomenal and they were timely. Mr. Morren's communication was outstanding. The work was completed efficiently and professionally and I was extremely impressed. I would recommend them without reservation.

Okay

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Hugh was very cordial at first... he was definitely putting his best foot forward and seemed to want the job. 

I asked him about one of the extremely negative reviews I had seen on Angie's List about him and he told me that the woman was a problem personality, unreasonable and obviously had mental problems.  [That is very close to an exact quote.]    Since my background is in Litigation... his commentary and bashing of this past customer did raise a red flag for me and I thought... I wonder if he's says this about everyone who finds a problem with his work.  It is not appropriate to bash a past customer because they found a problem with him or his work.  I found his negative remarks very unprofessional!  [The stated facts are all that are necessary.]  

The entire time Hugh spoke as though he would be the one doing the work and indicated that he was readily available to start the work  and that it would not take him long to get it done.  He also resided close to our home which we thought at the time was a plus for him being able to get the work done quickly as he had indicated.  Well, after we had made the agreement and given him the job... all of his promises and commitments went by the way side.

Suddenly, he was busy everywhere else and wanting to put us on the back burner.  One of the jobs was w/ a toilet in a bathroom and it was ... urgent...  after some pushing on my part... Hugh did get out and take care of that himself. 

He gave a verbal quote to my Dad on an added project and when I talked to him about setting up a time for it to be done he raised the amount of the quote... I called him on it and he said oh yeah... that's right. 

We got the distinct feeling that after he had given us a work date... he took on other jobs that meant more profit to him  and those got taken care of first. 

After that we were always told that he was busy with other jobs... and that we would have to wait for his brother-in-law to get into town to help finish the other work on our place.  The opposite of his initial representations to us!   As I recall, a week or more went by waiting for the brother-in-law to get into town to continue our projects.  They showed up late morning often and took long lunch hours always.  The work went slowly.  A couple of times he pulled his brother-in-law off our job allegedly he had to put him on something else.  During this time Hugh became verbally abrupt with me to the point where I thought seriously about just ending the business relationship.

This drug out... 

I had a heart-attack and had to go for medical therapy... so I told him we would go ahead and divide the projects in half and the rest could be finished when I got back. Since we were having to wait on his other commitments anyway.   I told him that I would be back on May 15th and asked...  would he be able to finish our projects at that time and he said yes.

I e-mailed him a confirmation that I was in fact going to be back from Medical Therapy on the 15th of May and again asked him if he would have his brother-in-law out to complete the work on our property by May 15th.

 I received a reply e-mail where he said yes he would have his brother-in-law there by Mid-May.  [With a background in law - I customarily keep all written communications - e-mail or otherwise.]  So I possess this confirmation e-mail from him as proof of same.

I called him 3 times trying to confirm that he would have his brother-in-law out the next week - I never received the decency of a return call.  I then sent e-mails... and finally he e-mails me back a ...  rude note ... stating that they were not going to wait for us!  And that he had sent  to his brother-in-law to work somewhere else!

I was floored!  Wait on US!! ... All the waiting that had been done was us waiting on him while he never kept his word with us on anything.  His note was aggressively insulting and rude and I have it too.  I believe that Hugh felt he could get away with bullying us because my Dad is elderly and fragile and I am a Widow who has had a heart attack... to Hugh we were perfect victims!  I bet he does not act like this when there is a healthy male involved as with most husbands and wife situations.  And I know he certainly would not have treated my Husband this way if he were alive!

This was obviously not the first lie Hugh had told us - everything he promised us in the initial interview with him turned out to be lies!  He never kept his word or his representations and now I know 100% why the other lady left her negative review on him.  Believe me she is not the one w/ the mental problem.  Because of my background in law I am trained in personality/gender profiling...  I also believe that Hugh gets his personal friends to leave reviews on Angie's List for him... the very first review at the top of the review list that I read today is allegedly written by a man... yet the statement is made in it...  My wife finds Hugh a "JOY" ....   this sentence is not something a man would say.  It is female language... next... at the end of this same review the reviewer who is allegedly a man and a neutral customer makes a veiled threat to other reviewers who might file a negative review... that if anyone finds fault with Hugh they had better look in the mirror!

This is clearly NOT a statement a normal - customer - w/o personal attachments like friendship or a relative would say.  There is no reason on earth why a regular customer leaving a legitmate review would feel the need to be threatening towards other customers of Hugh's who may of had a bad experience with Hugh.  I believe this is a "Shill" review.  If there is one Shill you can bet there are more!  Our experience with Hugh turned out to be a very negative one.

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Well when I finished with the plumber and got that repair completed, my first call was to Hugh. He has done some work for me before and I wouldn't even consider using anyone else. I was glad he was not too busy to fit me in and he showed up on time as usual. I went over the scope of the job with him and he said he would draw up a contract. I told him not to bother, that we didn't need a contract, a handshake would do.
Ours is a custom home and my wife is very particular about everything. She loved his work and Hugh is a joy to work with. Anyone who has a problem with Hugh Morren needs to check the mirror.
Another satisfied Hugh Morren customer.

Hugh hired his brother-in-law to work for him on part of my job! I have never had someone work like this before. He was so sloppy and had paint on everything. This place is a very nice townhouse that I rent furnished! It was empty at the time of the work! He had used my vacumn cleaner and had paint all over it. Didn't bother to clean it! Used my townhouse like he lived there. Used my other bathrooms for his daily bowl movements. I would check on things after each days work and he would lay things on my clean bedding etc.! He used bleach on walls and then set bleach bottles or tools on the bedroom carpet and left a fifty cent size spots on the carpet
Hugh says he works for him parttime but he had no business hiring this guy for any part of the work. I could go on and on but I would NEVER NEVER hire this company to do ANYTHING for me again. Did I tell you he is SLOPPY SLOPPY SLOPPY! NO I would NEVER hire this man again!

My last communication from Jason Terry advised that he would finish repairing the patio tile "at his convenience."  He has not found it convenient for several months, and Mr. Morren seems totally unconcerned. This story could go on and on, but suffice it to say that Mr. Morren's work for me was characterized by high prices (his own workers told me that he was marking up their work by as much as 40%), incompetency, delay and failure to take responsibility for mistakes and poor quality workmanship.  Although Mr. Morren was cordial to me when he bid the job and was paid to begin, once the first problem with the location of the fence arose, his attitude became rude and confrontational (as observed by a visitor to my house who was concerned about leaving while Mr. Morren was getting in my face and yelling at me), and has now degenerated even further into blaming anything and anyone he can in order to get out of the legitimate follow up work that needs to be done.  Mr. Morren was not licensed to do the work he did at my house, he did not post the bond required by the City of Port Aransas, he charged me for a building permit that was not required and that he did not and could not obtain, he has blamed mother nature and another very well respected company for the problems with his work, he has failed to even come to my property to observe the issues that exist, and he has now refused to communicate with me further.  Beware!

REBUTTAL TO PROVIDER RESPONSE:
Morren?s response?   We have tried to work with [member name removed] but had became very difficult to deal with.  First of all we had done our investigation and noticed that there was large equipment all around the area of the fence where it was buckled.  The fence had been impacted and she choose to get us to fix the fence for free instead confronting the large contractor that ran into the fence.  She also made up lies about things we did to get free work out of us.  We just could not continuing to go over there and work for free.  We had to draw the line somewhere.   My response?PLEASE ADD THIS DIRECTLY UNDER MR. MORREN?S RESPONSE SO IT CAN BE SEEN BY ANYONE READING THIS REVIEW?ALSO PLEASE POST THE PHOTOS I AM ATTACHING   It seems hardly necessary to respond to such a rude and accusatory response by Mr. Morren?it shows on its face Mr. Morren?s character and the manner in which he deals with problems concerning his work.  It bears remarkable similarity to his last response to someone else rating him with an F on Angie?s List?even though he missed an appointment with the person and she hired someone else, he states ?she probably would be a very difficult person to work for.?    The only ?difficulties? between me and Mr. Morren arose because of poor quality work and long delays in responding to problems.  His assertion that he performed some sort of ?investigation? into the problems with the fence seems unlikely, since both he and his worker Jason Terry immediately responded to my text message regarding the problem by blaming it on someone else.  He has never submitted any photo or other evidence of any kind indicating that anything other than poor workmanship was responsible for the problem with the fence that I paid them over $11,000 to construct.  His assertion that I did not confront the ?large contractor? that was working next door is hard to understand.  As is stated in my review of Mr. Morren, I contacted them about the problem, and they told me about their photo documentation of the fence beginning to lean in late January at the time of the first cold front when they were not working anywhere nearby.  At my request, the foreman on the job contacted Mr. Morren and told him about this documentation and confirmed that they had not touched the fence.  This is substantiated by photos taken by me after I noticed the problem and by the observations of numerous people?there is not a dent or a scratch on the fence indicating any kind of contact with it by a piece of equipment.   Mr. Morren?s assertion that I ?made up lies about things we did to get free work out of us? is ludicrous.  I paid Mr. Morren and his workers approximately $20,000 for the work at my house, and I paid everything they asked to be paid when they asked for payment.  There are numerous witnesses other than me to the problems with Mr. Morren?s work at my house.  The City of Port Aransas has confirmed (and would confirm to anyone who asked them) that he was not even licensed to do contracting work in Port Aransas at the time he did $20,000 of work on my house and that he never obtained a building permit for the fence he constructed, despite the fact that he charged me $150 for it as a line item.  The building officials were also astounded when I told them that Mr. Morren was blaming Island Construction, and stated that they had a hard time believing that Island Construction would ever fail to take responsibility for a problem they caused?it is not consistent with the history on that company.   I now have a fence that is seriously leaning and a patio that is a mess.  I am attaching photos of the patio?both the section unaffected by Mr. Morren, and the one affected by Mr. Morren and abandoned by him.  Please note that in order to get out of fixing the mess his worker created on the patio, he contended that my entire patio was damaged and in need of repair due to rain falling on it over the years.  The photos tell the story.    As a final note, I have noticed that all of the great reviews Mr. Morren has had on Angie?s List appear to involve small handyman jobs for amounts less than $3000, usually much less than that.  Perhaps he is capable of this type of work.  But if there is any problem, you can probably rest assured that you too will be placed by him in that category of ?difficult to work with.?  He does not stand behind his work, and instead is willing to call you a liar on Angie?s List!  Beware!

UPDATE:
I have now completed repairing at least the major mistakes made by Hugh Morren in the work he did at my house.  I had to hire a fence company to repair the fence he built and charged me $11,000 for.  They said that he did not use big enough pilings and did not sink the pilings deep enough into the ground.  Mr. Morren claimed that this fence started leaning after just a few months because it was hit by equipment from the other side.  Numerous inspectors have agreed that this was not the case, and the fence company confirmed that there was absolutely no evidence that the fence had been hit by anything.  I had to hire a contractor to repair the tile floor Hugh Morren installed in my kitchen--after just a few months the grout was cracking in several places.  I also had to redo the shower that Hugh Morren recaulked--after just a few months there was mildew coming from under the caulking he applied and the new contractor said that there were large voids left behind the caulking when Hugh Morren did it.  My patio tile that he left in a huge mess remains unresolved, as this is all costing a lot to repair, but will need to be done eventually.  Mr. Morren walked away from all of the problems with the work he did at my house without even an offer to correct them himself, and has since reportedly told another unhappy customer on Angie's List that I am mentally unbalanced!  Mr. Morren was paid in full for the work he did at my house, then refused to correct deficiencies and ultimately decided that this best option was to call me names on Angie's List!  He parted ways with the lead person on my job while it was ongoing and is apparently not working with the other one either--yet he took no responsibility for the many problems caused by these guys.  If you have a low dollar handyman repair to be done, then maybe Hugh is your man (that is what almost all of the positive reviews seem to pertain to)--if you have more significant