DWR Construction

No work done.

It went well. Love it!!!!

The owner of Doing What’s Right Construction Inc, Mike Arnett, came to my house and we agreed and signed the Contracts together. I paid a very large deposit at that moment. They started the job January 16. Hurricane Ike had damaged the roof, so the entire roofing material was to be removed, the decking checked for damage and repaired. The first problem was that the wrong shingles were delivered. What had been agreed upon and written into the contract signed my Mr. Arnett, were Timberline Ultra High Definition Hickory colored shingles. These are warrantied to 130mph winds. When I called the office and said that the wrong shingles had been delivered, the woman there refused to admit any mistake, argued with me and said she had sent out exactly what Mike Arnett gold her to send. When I reached the foreman, he also said they had sent what I ordered, but, when I made him read the contract, he finally agreed they had sent the wrong shingles. He himself drove to Dallas Texas over night, to get the right ones and delivered them here to my home. I believe this was not a mistake, that it was done on purpose hoping I would not notice, not only because of the statements of the two employees, but because Mike Arnett complained to me later that he had made a mistake when he sold me the more expensive shingles and was loosing money on the job. They took the old shingles off and were then beginning to put the new shingles over the old felt. I immediately talked to the foreman and brought it to his attention that the contract stated they would take off the old felt, check for - and repair - any damage to the decking underneath, then install new felt. This made them angry with me. When they were taking the shingles and felt off the roof, they didn't put any protection over my landscaping or anything. I've been told they're supposed to have a slide so all the stuff comes down safely. The old felt was brittle and they just threw it all over. It damaged my window screens and the top of my new $10,000 generator. They didn't replace any of the decking underneath. I am now looking at a big raised lump on my roof because they didn't follow the contract. They bragged to me after they finished the job that they "didn't need to replace any decking". This was a lie. My home received more damage when they were carrying the shingles up to the roof three bundles at a time. They threw them down on the roof all at once, rattling my windows and it sounded like a sonic boom. I checked inside the house and there were nail pops happening in the ceilings on both stories. The house shook, the walls shook. There was plaster everywhere! When I went outside to tell them that they were banging the shingles down and damaging the ceiling inside of the house, I found that none of them spoke English. I've had that problem before and I had been guaranteed, in advance of the job, a foreman, at all times, who spoke English. When the foreman finally turned up after lunch I brought him inside and showed him the plaster all over the floor, upstairs and down, and he instantly said, "nail pops", turned around and ran out the house. Nothing was ever done about it. My formal living room/dining area is two stories high and someone is going to have to get up a ladder and repatch these holes now that Doing What's Right has refused to help me. MAJOR PROBLEM...I had read the packaging on the shingles and it stated clearly that the 130 mph wind Warranty was void if the shingles were not installed with 6 nails each, rather than the usual 5. When I brought this to the attention of the foreman, he told me "We don't do 6 nails, we only do 5." This also made them very angry with me. The foreman did, in front of me, tell the workers to put 6 nails in, but they only did it when I was watching or they knew I was listening. When I wasn't around and they didn't know I could hear them, I heard them only doing 5. I did e-mail the owner and gave him all of this information, however, he would not answer my email message. NEXT PROBLEM: The installers obviously were unused to this extra thick shingle. Where they were working the shingle into the valleys, it has rippled and pokes up in an unsightly manner. When I asked the foreman 'What about those high areas there" he said "Oh, in the heat, when the weather heats up, those will lie down". They didn't, although we've been having 90 to 100 degree weather all summer. As soon as they were done they left and took all the remaining shingles with them. I was supposed to have them in case any repairs were needed in the future, and, I had paid for them! I called and asked for them to fix/redo a small spot that was obviously done improperly and talk to me about the other areas that were not lying down as they had told me would happen. I also told them to bring my shingles back that they had taken away without my permission. They brought back a couple of bundles of my shingles and dumped them in the front yard. Well, I'm a 72 year old Great Grand Mother. I could not pick them up. I had to wait until I could find someone to put them in my garage because even though I had told them I wanted to talk to them, the instant they finished reworking that one spot, they refused to talk to me about the other problems and they took off like a shot. The next day I got a letter in the mail from Mike Arnett, the owner, and in it he cancelled the other contract for 55 windows. He sent me a partial refund of the large deposit I had put down on all of this work, along with the cancellation letter stating that the roofer had now refused to install my windows on my house because I caused them so much trouble during the roofing job. WELL, THE TROUBLE WAS THAT DOING WHAT'S RIGHT WAS DOING WHAT'S WRONG AND I CAUGHT THEM AT IT! Upon reading the letter, I phoned ENT Windows in Fortworth Texas and discovered that my 55 custom windows were on the truck and on their way to Mike Arnett in Spring Texas. They said that my order with them had not been canceled. I then phoned Mike Armett and asked him why he was now refusing to put in my windows and he said "I lost too much money on the roofing job and my roofer is refusing to put in your windows because you intefered. I have cancelled the windows." I then said, " well that is strange, because I just talked to ENT and my windows are on their way to you right now." He was shocked, taken aback, and hung up the phone. He shortly called me back and begged me to forget the letter of cancellation, tear it up, tear up the partial refund check he had sent, and PLEASE "do not have any hard feelings and let me install your windows". Of course, by this time, it had finally dawned on me what was going on so I drove straight to his bank and cashed the check before he could stop me. I found out later from ENT Windows, that when the windows arrived, he refused them, sent them back and stuck ENT with the custom windows. I found another company in Houston who duplicated the order with ENT, got a new set of windows identical to the first, put them in quickly, efficiently, and did a totally beautiful, wonderful job for $3,000.00 less than what Doing What's Right was charging. I fully intend to give a glowing A+ rating to this new company I used, here inside of Angie's list, for all the world to see.

. Overall , do not contract with this company. Do not order nor install Schrock cabientry. Do shop around and do not believe that DWR will do what is right. Just the opposite.

We interviewed several home remodelers and really liked DWR. Everyone we interviewed gave us about the same estimate, so we chose DWR because we really liked the owner and felt like we were in good hands. He had great references and had even won an award for Best Home Remodeler in the Woodlands. We paid $1600 for design plans and began working with one of his designers. After six months of going back and forth with the plans via email,( sometimes waiting a week for a response) and little or no contact with the owner, we began to question why this was taking so long. We asked if we could finalize everything and get the ACTUAL cost so that we could proceed with the actual remodel. Mike was going on vacation but agreed to meet with us the night before he left. We received an email that evening stating that he had a 'toothache' and could not make it. He said that the remodel was going to cost a lot more than he originally thought and that we should try interviewing other remodelers or consider selling our house and moving. The price was more than double his original estimate. We did make some changes to the plans that would have caused the cost to go up slightly, but the reason that this estimate was so far off was not due to these changes. I honestly don't know if it was due to a huge miscalculation on his part, or if this was some sort of bait and switch. We asked to revamp the plans to get cost down as much as possible. After working with the designer for about a week trying to adjust the plans, we received an email from the owner that he had taken on some bigger projects and would no longer be able to handle our home remodel. This was after an extensive interview process, and working with them for SIX MONTHS. We asked if he could get our plans engineer stamped so that we could proceed with getting other estimates. He said that would be an extra $150. We agreed and asked to proceed with getting the plans finalized. He then told us that he could not get them engineer stamped. ???? After my husband and Mike went back and forth with several emails, Mike did offer to refund our $1600. My husband told him that since we had basically signed on with them six months ago and still had NOTHING to show for it, that refunding our money would be the honorable thing to do. We got our money back, along with a copy of the plans and we our now back to square one. This was not handled professionally. I would not recommend this company to anyone planning a home remodel. We are now in the process of interviewing new companies and the first company who looked at these plans (who has received very high ratings on this sight!) says they are basically worthless. They are not something he could use to give us any type of a quote, nor would he feel comfortable using them in any way during the building process.

It took them an entire year to remodel a very small bathroom. They did not do an exceptional job considering how long it took. We had a lot of subs in to do plumbing and electrical work and all the work was poor. I actually heard the manager tell someone on the phone that this “old woman out here in the sticks hired me and I have to drive all the way out here to Humble”. He apologized, but it still made me upset.

The use of sub-contractors was troublesome as not all of them were as professional as the managing company, nor was each subcontractor equally skilled. Problems encountered were late delivery on the windows, awkward installation of the door and poor installation of the door hardware and electrical work that was not performed as requested and thus had to be reworked three times. Most disappointing, the tile work was not well-thought out before installation and does not align with existing work. However, in the end, we have the room we wanted. The estimator was easy to work with and followed the project through completion. The project supervisor was on-site most days there was work ongoing and reacted quickly and appropriately when problems arose. They truly did seem to want to do the right thing, but seemed to have difficulty executing upon their intentions.

We hired DWR after another company had absconded with several thousand dollars of the repair funds. DWR assessed the house and we had several meetings over details of the repairs and, primarily, over the insurance funds. All of this dragged on with no work being done and we became concerned that our living expense allowance would expire (we were living in another house). The insurance company recommended a certified mold remediation company but DWR convinced me that they were licensed for mold remediation and could do that part, too. Finally, they delivered a trash receptacle and started packing up the house. They assured us that they used experienced, professional packers and that they would clean the contents as well as the mold remediation company would have done. We discovered that there was one regular employee who hired a bunch of college kids who had no experience with this kind of environment. (This employee told us that DWR had only done this kind of work one other time and had no training or license for mold remediation.) We fired them when we discovered that they were just throwing much of our furniture, clothes, personal effects, and books in the trash receptacle. We were paying quite a bit for cleaning and there was no evidence of any cleaning at all. It became obvious that the hired kids became impatient with the job because progressive boxes were packed more and more poorly- random things were thrown together, clothes that had been wet were thrown rolled up in a box with kitchen stuff, etc. In addition, they failed to properly secure the tarp on the roof and it blew off during a rain storm, causing the ceiling to collapse in a previously undamaged (and unpacked) room. The final straw came with a call from the insurance company who told us that the negotiations over price with DWR were deadlocked. DWR requested more money than the insurance company would pay; they had already increased the offer by about $40,000. This deadlock had been going on for THREE months. (We had been constantly contacting the insurance company but our adjustor changed three times so their response to us was also slow.) We had been sitting in a rental house, nearing the end of the insurance funds, and DWR never informed us that the quote for the job had not been approved. After we fired DWR, they attempted to intimidate and threaten us after we asked them to leave our property and stop any activity (we had already caught them on the property after we fired them). They refused to give us the location of the warehouse where they had stored our household goods. They filed a false police report against my husband which was dismissed when it was ascertained that the information given to the police by DWR was not true. After our home was finally repaired through the able contracting of our son-in-law, we retrieved the stuff from the warehouse that DWR had rented to store our household goods. Stuff in the warehouse was poorly stacked, items were broken, cloth-containing items were moldy, and some things have never been found.

Doing Whats Right Construction did an all around pretty good job. I had a good experience. The work they did in my home all turned out beautifully. There were a few small problems along the way, but they did whatever it took to make it right. It was supposed to be a two month job but it ended up taking four months. I wasn't real happy about that. But the guys did work hard every day and I would rather they take the time necessary to do it right. All the floors, carpet, and tile look fine and the quality of products were of my choice. I liked that the painting was all perfect and looked great. It was an overall good job from nice people.

DWR Construction did a horrible job. It got so bad that they even used the wrong color to paint and even that paint started to peel. They refused to come back and fix it. I actually thought they were polite people but who knows these days.