Northern Lights

unknown

They totally rebuilt the front porch because we had some problems when we bought the house so they had to totally reattach it to the house essentially.  The roof cost about $10,000 but I don’t know how much the porch cost because it was paid by a third party.  I would highly recommend them because they did a really good job.  The owner basically subcontracted the roofing and they did fine on that.  As far as rebuilding of the porch it's kind of complicated and essentially it was an employee of his company that came out and did the work.  It just took a long time but there was a lot of work to be done.  The only thing is I know he had some problems with some of his people in terms of gradually come to work and then they quit.  Overall the work was done in a timely manner.  They cleaned up everything.  I think it was done technically very well.  The roof was priced reasonably because we got about four different estimates on it.  We were real happy with the roof and the porch was done very well from a technical perspective.  I think there were mitigating circumstances beyond his control and I don't think it was anything malicious or intentional but I think it was due to the particular time when he was dealing.  He had various problems with having enough employees to do the various works that he had contracted.  But again it wasn't aggravating but sometimes frustrating.

John Haines came out to look at the work pointed out on our home inspection report (as well as other items he pointed out) prior to our signing a contract on the house because we wanted an accurate estimate for the cost of the work that the house required.  After closing, we began to schedule the work, beginning with replacing all of the two pronged outlets with grounded three-prong outlets as well as replacement of all of the circuit breakers in the panel.  It took five visits by his crew, and two by the owner - John - until we finally hired another electrician to come in to find out why half of our house kept tripping the breaker. 

It turns out that an outside outlet which had not been replaced on any of the five visits was the cause.  The electrician that we did hire (and would hire again!) - Quality Electric - showed us how the wire was smoking and needed to be replaced with a weather-tight outdoor outlet.  This took less than 15 minutes for him to find.  Cost - approximately $250  - which also included adding an outdoor fixture and outlet to the garage.  Cost from Northern Lights - close to $5,000 for the work performed and the workers left messes in each room that they worked in, including leaving wire trimmings in our children's room.

We decided to go with other contractors on the remaining work that we had originally planned to have completed by Northern Lights because of the issues with the electrical work but also because as we started discussing the work yet to be done, the prices we were originally quoted in writing on the work were grossly inaccurate. 

Wonderful job! Exactly what I wanted. They even left rolled sod for me to use for lawn repair.

It went well. They overcame many obstacles in trying to fish wires through walls and dealt with oppressive attic heat. It was a tough job, but they delivered as promised. I am very happy with the results. The only minor blemish on an otherwise good experience was the hole in the drywall that had to be cut in order to fish wire for the wall switch. I know the hole was necessary - no problem there, but when I asked the company if I could contract them to repair it, no one got back to me. I had to find someone else to fix it.

I'm mostly satisfied with the work and the company. Some members of the contracting team were better than others. The site manager, who also did a lot of the actual construction, worked long hours to ensure a quality job and was great at correcting any issues I brought to attention. However, overall communication from the company and responsiveness were spotty at times. I would rather be pushed information than have to pull it. I am satisfied with the workmanship, but I do feel there were some obvious fixes I pointed out that shouldn't have passed their own quality assurance standards. I would use them again, and I think that with some refinement, this could be a top-notch construction company.