Basement Creations

.The completion of our basement began with the HVAC sub; Boss Incorporated.  Overall, they did a
good job. We also used  Basement Creations electrician. The owner, Travis, whom I was told typically oversees the electrical work, did not do any of the work on our basement. He sent his son and another young man. The two of them worked together for a couple of days, but left some of the electrical work
unfinished. We were literally told that they had to leave to go work on a bigger  job.
For example, they did not wire for the surround sound, and they did not finish the bathroom fan. A hole needed to be
cut through the wall to the outside of the house for the fan ventilation. Eventually our
contractor, Doug Korth, and another worker finished the fan themselves. When the day arrived for the
electrician to return to complete the last of the electrical work, he complained
when we reminded him that we still needed to have the wiring installed
for the surround sound. He said that he was never told that that was
part of the bid. He went ahead and  installed the wiring for the surround sound, but acted put out.
Communication was an ongoing problem throughout the entire finish of our basement. The experience with the electrician  is an example of that lack of communication. Shouldn't the electrician  have been told by our contractor what was in the bid for them to complete? This was one of several awkward moments. Overall, we thought that T&T Electric acted unprofessionally.
The plumber was also a subcontractor for Basement Creations. He was the best part of the entire finish experience. He was excellent! If you are ever in need of a plumber, Chris Duke is the man. He was very professional. He went out of his way several times to help us get the job done the way we wanted, and he even completed tasks that were not his to complete. Chris was efficient, and his work was impeccable. What a nice guy. The overall grade I would give to him is an A++!.
The framers and trim people I
believe were the same company; Columbia Millworks.  Again, subs for Basement Creations. We had a significant problem with the installation of the closet doors which also came from Columbia Millworks.
We wanted mirrored closet doors in each bedroom, which is what the original bid was for. The closet doors turned into quite a debacle. We received four
sets of the wrong closet doors.  In one bedroom, trim was mistakenly
added to the inside of the closet frame and so a standard closet door
would no longer fit. Our contractor did not catch this mistake in time to easily correct it.  This increased the price of the closet doors because now they had to be custom fitted. We paid extra to buy the doors we wanted and Basement Creations covered the installation fees. The opening in the second bedroom for the closet
doors was also not finished correctly because those closet doors wouldn't fit either. They were taken out to our driveway and cut. Without reinforcing them, the closet doors were brought back in and installed. I specifically asked the installer (from Columbia Millworks), if that was the proper way to trim the doors and was told yes. When they started to leak sawdust as I opened and closed them, I knew they were not trimmed correctly. At that point, this company refused to come back and correct the problem. Between the two bedroom closets, the contractor had a difficult time resolving the problem. However, because of the mistakes that his subs had made, there wasn't a cheap approach. The installation of the closet doors was one of the items that was not completed until the first of November because we were left to resolve the problem on our own. The contractor didn't  inform us that he was no longer working on a solution to the problem.  After finally learning that he wasn't working on a solution anymore, we had to hire another contractor who virtually without any adjustments other than sanding one side of each closet door, installed the original mirrored doors we had asked for in the first place. They came from Home Depot and are the Pinecroft mirrored closet doors.  He installed them and I painted them.
The bathroom shower was installed by a subcontractor as well; CMS Cultured Marble Specialists. Basement Creations had never used this company before us.  I caught their technician right before he installed a shower panel that he had accidentally chipped off a corner piece from. He had applied the glue and was ready to install it. I stopped him and asked what he was planning to do with the chipped corner. He told me that it would require a patch once it is installed. It would look like an extra trim around the top of the shower when he was finished.  I told him that we didn't want the shower to have a patched corner and that he should have told us about the chip before making the decision to install it anyway.  And so he ordered another panel. A second different shower panel bowed after it was installed and glued down. It had to be ripped out and replaced as well. We were delivered three different shower doors before we received the correct one. We ordered an oil-rubbed bronze trimmed shower door and received two chrome doors, and another that was oil-rubbed bronze, but was the wrong size. Again, I handled this debacle as well. Our contractor was busy on other jobs and wasn't even aware of the problems occurring. The owner of this company was very apologetic and called us personally to make things right.
The painters were scheduled to arrive on an assigned day and had to be rescheduled because they accepted another job.  We were waiting for them for a week and a half because of the additional job, a family reunion, and a broken down truck. They also stained our bannister. The first one came back dark and blotchy. Even the contractor admitted he didn't like the result. The second one was rough to the touch and had a small piece of wood missing out of an end. The third bannister was perfect. It was smooth and sanded and the stain looked great. Doug finished that one himself.
Yes there were uncomfortable confrontations as we tried to work with the contractor and the subs in fixing the problems that arose. We would have been naive in thinking that our basement finish would be virtually problem-free. However, instead of focusing on the solutions to each problem,  the position that our contractor and jerone began to take is that we, or more specifically I, was impossible to please. My husbands response to this was that if I hadn't been home to catch some of these mistakes, the problems could have been much greater and more difficult to resolve. Jerone told us that some of the subcontractors had also said I was hard to please. Yes, we are hard to please if that means we wanted the job done correctly. We did not ask any of the subcontractors to do any job outside of the bid.
RATINGS:
I rated my overall experience with Basement Creations a C. The rest of the ratings will explain why.
I rated price a B.
Although the initial bid was reasonable, we felt like we were left in the dark in terms of specific items, even though we asked for those.  We felt like the bids on items like carpet, bathroom specifics, and the kitchenette including the cabinets, granite counter tops, Moen fixtures, sink and plumbing were underbid. This cost us much more in the end. Again, we were told that all bids were based on mid-range prices. After doing our homework, we learned their bids were on the lower end price-wise.
I rated quality a B.
Our basement turned out well in the end. However, we wondered what problems we would have encountered if I
had not caught and intervened when problems arose. Also, Doug seemed more preoccupied with taking the cheapest routes rather than on quality. An example of this I have written under professionalism category (shower ceiling).
I rated responsiveness a D.

Mike (the owner) came out and gave me a bid, he was friendly, and upfront about everything, and he explained what he would do in great detail. He was here to oversee most of the construction. Things went almost to schedule (a little rain and a wrong size window well added one day) The window is awesome, Mike was fantastic and the subs he had come were awesome too. It was a great experience and I would use them again.

It went very well. He is very open with his communications and his easy to work with. The plan was come up with collaboratively. He had to make changes because I didn't know what I was talking about, but he was great.

We wanted to finish our basement so we contact several companies. After meeting with those companies, we decided to hire Basement Creations for the job - they offered a competitve estimate, were able to get started right away, and seemed completely committed to doing a great job for us. We got started as scheduled; Mike (Basement Creations' owner/general contractor) was here every step of the way making sure things went smoothly and that the work was meeting our expectations; the subcontractors were all prompt, friendly and respectful; and the end product turned out better than we imagined. We added a full kitchen, TV room with beautiful custom built-ins, bedrooms, and a full bathroom. We also had them move our existing kitchen countertops to the basement kitchen and install new countertops upstairs. We encountered very few hiccups along the way - most were fixtures, glass tile or other allowance items that we chose being immediately available from the respective suppliers, subs having scheduling problems - but Mike stayed on top of everything, so we knew what to expect. We were able to easily add a few projects during the construction, and Mike's subcontractors were able to perfectly execute those added projects. Mike and his subs were able to answer all our questions and make any adjustments that we wanted. When the project was finished, we were 100% satisfied with the work and sad to see them go! Our experience with Mike and Basement Creations was absolutely positive and we would highly recommend them to anyone who wanted to finish their basement. We could not be happier with the job they did for us.