Choice Improvements LLC

He was a pleasure to work with and my kids got to know him as Mr. Ray.  He did great with a lot of the big projects and got them done on time and efficiently .  Towards the end, he got busy on other jobs but made a hard effort to make time to make it over to our home and finish the little jobs.  In a way he became another member to our family, he wanted to make sure everything was done right and was working properly.

Choice Improvements LLC showed up on time, his work was excellent. He had many suggestions. He is very professional and friendly. Easy to work with, easy to approach. It was overall an excellent experience.

It was an excellent experience!  Ray from Choice Improvements worked with us to design a family room, full bathroom, play area and bedroom in our lower level.  Ray had great ideas for us and knew when to make suggestions,  he puts a lot of time and effort into his work and it really shows in the quality!!  He was easy to work with, very pleasant, on time, always clean up after a days work.  We are extremely pleased with the finished lower level.  It turned out more beautiful than we imagined!!!

Very professional and excellent work.  Tile work was all at angles and had design pieces inserted randomly.  He was very patient and worked with me by laying our the design before starting anything and got my approval before final adhesive was applied.  All angles matched up beautifully and the grout was evenly spaced.  My floors required a lot of tile cutting and piecing and he cut all tile in our garage or outside to minimize the dust and mess in our house.  He cleaned up every night before leaving, vacuumed when necessary and always left his work site clean and organized.  He offered suggestions when I had questions which helped me to decide what I wanted.  When he was done with a room the tile was washed and cleaned up and any carpet vacuumed.  All new baseboards in the kitchen where stained to match my kitchen cabinets and matched perfectly and looked great.  He was not happy unless I was happy and I'm pretty fussy.  He ordered all tile and materials for me and gave me his discount whenever possible.  I would highly recommend him for any job.

Before this project I had never hired a contractor, and was a bit nervous going in.  Overall, I'm very happy with my experience, and it seems to have gone much smoother than what I've seen family/friends go through when remodeling.  I hope to work with Choice Improvements again in the future when I have a home improvement project.  

I contacted Ray (owner of Choice Improvements) in mid-April about the project after my previous plans fell through due to my difficult-to-work-with condo association.  Adding the bathroom involved digging up cement through a common area basement and hooking a new sewage into a common sewage ejector pump that has had problems in the past.  My condo association was understandably nervous about this.  The bathroom conversion also required architects approval for a building permit since condo buildings are commercial units, and this is required for projects like this.  These two factors made my original plans to have out-of-town friends do the project as part of a barter, untenable.  The work Ray did was thoroughly reviewed by permitting department and fully inspected.  He did most of the work himself, and sub-contracted out for plumbing, electrical.  

Ray is well-trusted in my condo association and has done very nice work for another unit, so I started talking to him.  He provided a competitive quote within short order.  Once I signed the contract, Ray began obtaining permits and work started within roughly a week and a half.  Since early May when work started, there has been steady progress being made despite various obstacles: mold, rusty old electrical conduit  found in the common area cement, delivery of the wrong bathtub, etc.  Work was completed today and final inspection is happening this week.  We had originally talked about having the work done within a month, but given the various obstacles, the timing was very reasonable.  

The new bathroom is adjacent to our bedroom, and my partner has a strange sleep schedule, so Ray had to work around that a bit.  He was respectful of our space and put up barriers to keep construction dust out of our living spaces as much as possible, and cleaned up after himself.  

If you work with Ray, and have a busy work schedule, I recommend making sure you're ahead of the game on making any decisions required (in my case: fixtures, tiles, layout, paint color).  In order to keep my project moving forward, I sometimes had to make these decisions in short order.  Making these decisions was the hardest part of the project for me  (e.g. Ray took care of everything else.)  Ray doesn't mark up tile or fixture prices, and is happy to work with materials from home depot or the like, so I had lots of fairly reasonably priced options.  

Ray made many helpful suggestions, has a nice sense of aesthetics, and works very well with small spaces.  He gave my project a great deal of personal attention, and talked with me often about progress and any decisions or obstacles.  I found that he isn't big on writing things out ahead of time or planning out every detail in advance, but he really dives in once a project is going, and helps you make good choices along the way.  For example, in my project, once demolition was complete, he suggested raising the ceiling 8 inches over the shower, which looks very nice architecturally now.  He also did some gorgeous woodwork for a sink pedestal and open shelving in the bathroom.  

Overall, I highly recommend working with Ray if you're looking for a one-man shop that is attentive to your needs, and reasonably priced.  Ray is very talented at doing woodwork, so I highly recommend him for custom cabinetry/shelving.  

The workman did and excellent job and the quality of his work was excellent.  He is a very good craftsman and has great ideas.  I was comfortable to have him around in the house, he was pleasant and would do some other things for me. He had quality people to complete some of the jobs like tub refinishing and staining.   I really thought I had found someone to do future jobs.   BUT,  The job took forever!  He would drop my job to start someone else's job and not return for days.  He would say he was returning and not show up.  He was very unpredictable in this manner.