Cascade Construction Services

The quality of work was good. However, the timeline, quoting process, adhering to the bids, communication with Dave the owner was very challenging. He often did not show up when promised, did not do what was expected on time. Bid would be doubled after the fact. He and subcontractors were out of sync, and would each tell us something different. i.e. the subcontractor would say they were waiting on Dave, Dave would say he was waiting on the subcontractor. The overall process took far too long for the size of the project. He would promise to send us signed documents in the mail that never arrived. The crew was hard working but as a project manager, Dave is lacking in organization, follow through and professionalism.

This is not a positive review, but I want to emphasize that there are many positives about Dave. He is hard-working, honest, and very congenial. We like Dave and appreciate his positive disposition, can-do attitude and flexibility. We made a lot of changes after construction started, and Dave was flexible and often made very helpful suggestions. Dave did get the big things related to our job done, and he made sure the sub-contractors completed all of their work in a satisfactory manner. Dave's billing was reasonable for the work he performed. Our budget for the job did expand a lot, but most of that was due to choices that we made. I do think Dave can improve both the thoroughness of his budget, as well as how he tracks progress vs. the budget. That said, I don't really have any strong concerns when it comes to the finances of our job. Dave is an honest guy who tries to be fair. There are some other areas where we are EXTREMELY unhappy about our experience with Dave, and I will never hire Dave again as a result. Our biggest concern is that Dave has simply not fully completed our job. We started compiling a "punch list" 9 months ago, and many of the items are still not complete. For example, we have no base on our kitchen island, no trim on our new fireplace gas valve, no paint on a makeup air vent in our kitchen (really looks bad), a number of unpainted drywall patches, a sliding door that slips out of its track and locks people in our laundry room, a big 1" diameter gash in our hardwood floor caused when a subcontractor slipped and fell, and much and more. I've been hounding Dave for months and months about these and other issues, and he did come back from time to time and get a few items done. But I finally got so frustrated that I asked him to not bother any longer, and I am now finishing the punch list myself. There are a number of items for which I'm hiring another contractor to finish. Dave told me that some of the things I wanted fixed were actually new work and not actually "punch list" items. In EVERY case, I said "Fine. Please just do the work and bill me for it." But offering to pay him for the work didn't lead to any better results. I've concluded that he's moved onto new jobs that are paying him more, and he just doesn't care about our job any longer. Another huge area of frustration is poor quality work in a number of areas. Of particular concern is crown molding and trim in our kitchen that was installed by his in-house construction guys. While these are nice guys, they are not finish carpenters, and their trim work is horrible. The miters aren't tight or square (there are open gaps). In another area they used a Skil saw to rip a set of trim boards wrapped around our kitchen window, resulting in uneven edges and bad joints. They attempted to cover everything with caulk and paint, but it doesn't look good. (FWIW, Dave did some trim work himself, and it's AWESOME. Dave is himself a skilled carpenter.) Dave did make sure that we got final sign-off on our permit from the city, which I appreciate. I've shared everything in this review with Dave, and he mostly doesn't accept responsibility. He says that many of the problems aren't his fault because we made so many changes and the subs don't want to come back any longer. In many of these cases, Dave had ENCOURAGED us to make the changes in question, so it is really questionable that he is not standing by the very work he suggested that we do. My father-in-law spent 45+ years building homes and running home-building companies, and he frequently vented to me that Dave was not a good site manager. He felt our job site was dirty and disorganized, and that both the quality and speed of work were poor. I now find myself spending many nights and weekends finishing Dave's work for him. In summary, Dave is a good person, honest and capable of good work. But I would not trust him with a big job. My overall impression is that he got in over his head on our job and is trying to cut his losses by avoiding finishing.