ISLAND HAMMER LLC

They suck.. Not professional

Built without permit- said, in writing, small job didn't require it. Structure was unsafe design, poorly constructed with shoddy materials, shoddy workmanship and improper building practices. The whole thing was so poorly stuck together with cheap materials and no finish work at all that it looked like it belonged on Pa Kettle's farm not on the front of a $400,000.00 house. Upon completion the front of the structure almost immediately started sinking into the ground while the front support posts that were supposed to hold up the peaked roof began leaning away from each other at the top as a result of the lack of proper design and construction and the whole structure was in danger of collapse. I invited the County Building Inspector out to inspect and he found that the main horizontal support beams were attached to the front of the house with not only improper hangers but were simply nailed to the front of the house supported only by nails into the OSB under the siding and not into anything to provide structural support. The front of the "porch" was supported only by pier blocks set on the lawn rather than on proper concrete footings which explains why it was sinking significantly. The front fascia was warped so badly when installed that it had to be replaced as did the stairs which were not supported by poured concrete. The railing was mounted on sad looking non-pressure treated 4x4s that were badly split and set directly on the ground to rot. The contractor essentially refused to meet with me- he actually showed up for one meeting at the site and got there early, saw the thing and left before I arrived. I had to hire an architect to redesign a safe structure- he said the first snow load would probably have collapsed the whole thing- and then took the time to find a competent builder with a good word of mouth reputation to redo the thing properly. He poured footings, used good timbers to tie the whole thing together, replaced the shoddy flooring and the rough 2x4 railings with good quality lumber, installed a proper set of stairs and did some very nice trim work to cover the rest of the poor work. There isn't enough space to detail all the other smaller issues like incorrect paint, the electrical work performed by non electricians that all had to be redone and on and on. Have some 300 pictures of the whole sad mess. The moral of the story is do your homework. Don't just pick some guy off a website that writes and posts his own spurious reviews. Only use someone that is recommended by someone that you know and trust.

Overall, horribly. This contractor's ability to adhere to a schedule and arrive when predicted was worse than anything I had ever endured. Workers virtually never arrived on time, and on several days never arrived at all, even though I was assured that certain parts of the job would be carried out on those days. This lack of responsibility is extremely frustrating for a homeowner who has better things to do than hang around waiting for the phone to ring or someone to pull into the driveway. I think this would include virtually every homeowner. The only exception to arriving when predicted was on the final day of closeout inspection, when they came to repair a few flaws and present the final invoice. The schedule was complicated by the fact that one wall of the shower wall arrived with a crack. On the recommendation of Island Hammer, I ordered a replacement so that they could warranty the work, but this put a 3 week delay into the completion schedule. My final consensus was that the job was way overpriced, especially considering that much of the work was done by inexperienced workers and required my personal assistance to get the job completed, along with the many days of frustration with their inability to manage a schedule.

They were very professional in considering our ideas and inputs into the renovation. We used our own plans for our renovation that we did on our computer. They were very conscientious to serving out needs on 24/7 basis. We are extremely happy with the results and would recommend him highly.