TCB Remodeling & Construction - Contractors

The gentleman were AMAZING and thorough and FAIR! I will definitely use this company again and again and recommend them to everyone!!

We brought in TCB to help with a home addition of just under 500 square feet. We were on an extremely tight budget and we discussed this in detail with the owner multiple times. We felt like the owner wanted to provide our addition for us within our allotted budget. I am a Disabled Veteran and I really liked the idea of working with TCB due to their Veteran status. This was a huge selling point for me. Let me say, that our house was not in bad shape to start, in fact, it was stated many times that the house was solid! It was however challenging due to the era of the home and how it was constructed. Every wall (interior and exterior) had shiplap instead of typical more modern wall coverings. The exterior had vinyl siding over T-105 siding. All of this was discussed prior to the start of any work. The house was out of level and had been leveled just prior to any construction. I will say that we discovered a small amount of rot on one corner of the existing house foundation that we had to call our house leveler back out and had to have fixed. This was a very small fee in comparison to the project as a whole, only $800. The first mistake I made was to allow the owner to convince me that hiring him and his crew at an hourly rate would be cheaper and more beneficial for us, giving us more flexibility to help and save money. The original estimate quoted us 4 weeks turn around and with a crew of 4 men for a weathered in and inspected addition. This would have kept our labor budget in the neighborhood of just under $13k. We agreed to allow him to run his crew and start our addition based on this gentlemans handshake agreement. It took a while to get the permits and get started. Once the crew actually started on construction the owner brought in a fifth man at $20 per hour. Then said he would not charge us for his own rate of $25 per hour. We took this as an act of kindness knowing our budget. Every week we wrote a labor check to the owner and I spoke to him about the standings of the budget. He assured me over and over that we were good. After week 6, I had a conversation with the owner about the time it was taking and how we were past our 4 week estimate. I was given an excuse for rain and weather delays. I accepted the excuse. After week 8 we had another conversation about the budget and the time. At this point the owner complained that we were not getting an addition at the original estimate cost but instead we were actually getting a value of $20k more than the estimate and that his crew was working diligently. Meanwhile my wife, father. And multiple neighbors confronted me about how often some of the crew sat around and how inefficient they were. I took off a week from work to aid in getting the roof tied into the addition, during this time I saw exactly what the neighbors complained about. The fifth gentleman spent on average 2 hours per day working (mostly jobsite clean up). At week 9, we were not dried in, nor were we inspected. We were almost out of money. So I had another conversation with the owner, I told him that we had only $6k left in the budget to complete the entire project. I still needed insulation and drywall at minimum for my family to move back into the house. I then told the owner that I would only be writing one more labor check and it would not be until the addition was weathered in and passed city inspection. I asked him to give me one last amount of money for that last labor check. I told him, if it took one more week or four more weeks, I didn't care, however there was only going to be that last check for a fixed amount. He avoided giving me that number throughout multiple conversations. Two weeks later he hands me two invoices for a total of around $3500. I asked him if this was that last number, reminding him again, that there would only be one more check. He said, if I can get the man from the city to come inspect on Monday or Tuesday then he would not charge me for that week. The home was inspected on Tuesday and it failed inspections. The crew spent another two weeks getting it to pass inspections before I took over and called the inspector for the punch list and I finished the electrical to pass inspection. While I was finishing the last item on the punch list, the owner of the company came by and asked if we had passed inspections, I stated no we hadn't and I would be taking care of the last items. I asked my wife to get the checkbook so I could write the owner the last check for $3500. The owner them stated, "let's worry about that tomorrow when we pass inspection". I told him there would be a check on the table for that stated amount when he came by the next day. He left and I wrote the check and called the city for the last inspection. The next day I stopped by the house and the check was gone, and the owner nailed another invoice on one of the interior door ways. I have not heard from the owner since, it has been almost a month. There is no money remaining in the bank to pay the last invoice because insulation and drywall had to be purchased, which we are installing ourselves. Not to mention the owner told me that he would not charge me if he could get the guy to come inspect when he did, and he did. It is not our fault his work failed inspection and he spent time reworking the items. I supplied all the materials and there was no delay in waiting for any materials. We bargain shopped for materials to keep cost low. We bought solid oak flooring that had been removed from a house as an insurance claim. The flooring was floating, click lock style floor and came up with zero damage. We purchased tile for the bathroom from the ReStore, and from an online auction which saved us hundreds of dollars. I received a veterans discount on almost all new items needed. I called and shopped for all the structural materials at the best prices and had them delivered before they were needed. Occasionally the owner would need something and he would purchase it and supply me with a receipt and I would always pay him promptly for anything he purchased (other than materials he had to rebuy due to mishaps or misinstallation). The overall quality of the work was not bad. There was a lack of attention to detail that is frustrating while doing the finish work like drywall. I'm finding some of the studs are not on 16" centers, and some are not straight (maybe 16" on bottom and 15" at the top). All the windows were framed incorrectly and spacers had to be added to make the windows fit, even though I had sent a text to the owner of the exact size of the windows and he had the windows on site to measure them. The openings were all 1.5" wider and 3" taller than they were supposed to be for the supplied windows. I specifically requested a factory tongue or groove on the subflooring be left at the adjoining wall so we could easily replace the subflooring in the existing house to the addition, this was not done. The roof took multiple weeks to finish and the end product, even though it does not leak, looks unprofessional and the metal facia I purchased for the roof was carelessly nailed through the face. Multiple jobs that were in the original estimate were completed by myself. We planned to move the front door and swap the location of it and a window. It took my wife and I 13 hours to do this ourselves. The demolition of the original kitchen took my wife, 13 yr old son, and myself a weekend to do. While installing the drywall on the ceiling, the entire back half of the addition had to be furrowed down almost an inch, while the front of the addition needed no furring, this caused a lot of additional work and framing in the transition areas to get the drywall even somewhat flat. When purchasing materials for the walls during the initial framing process, I told the owner that the original house was built with full 8' 2x4s, he insisted that the new addition didn't require that, and that the "stud length" 2x4s were what needed to be purchased. After the framing of the walls, it was discovered, in order to get the roof framing to line up with the existing house they needed to add a third cap or top plate to make up the distance, when full 8' 2x4s

Good. They showed up when they said they would. Everything went fine. I was satisfied.