Disclaimer: this review is based solely on our own recent experience. We hope it provides unbiased information and useful feedback.
For about 2 months (from last week of March to end of May 2016) we hired Dempster Plumbing to remodel two guest bathrooms in our house. The company did a reasonable job overall, and completed all required work items. The crew was courteous, clean, hard-working, communicative, and receptive to our concerns.
Unfortunately, several details of our remodeling project fell short of our expectations, and left more to be desired. Therefore we are reluctant to recommend Dempster for high-end bathroom remodeling projects, especially if natural stone (e.g. marble) is involved.
Pricing. The price charged for our remodeling project was relatively high. We had interviewed three other contractors, all with decent Yelp reviews, and obtained written quotes (all quotes were for labor-only). Dempster's quote was the highest (around 50% higher than the 2nd highest, and almost twice the lowest). They also charged extra for installing marble tiles, and extra for marble bullnosing per linear foot. We agreed to the pricing in hope for a higher quality job, but the result was rather disappointing (see below for more details).
Quality and Workmanship. Most of the project is completed by one guy (Vallen), with some help from a couple of assistants. However, he didn't seem to possess adequate skills to handle some of the tasks, as mentioned below. He was fairly open to feedback and willing to fix the most jarring problems. However, the sheer number of quality issues made it impossible to make progress if we were to pause the job every day and fix things.
One such example is edge treatment (bullnosing) for marble tiles. It was done rather poorly. The resulting tile edges were visibly curved inwards near the corners. Eventually this improved, but we still ended up with several curved edges in prominent locations. There was also a problem with marble tiling in general. Apparently Vallen was not at all experienced in dealing with natural stone tiles. Although he tried very hard to fix the problems as we requested, and did gradually improve later on, we still ended up with noticeable lippage and uneven gaps for quite a number of tiles.
Another example was with drywall repair and texturing. One of the bathrooms required a large area of drywall repair. Vallen has some drywall experience, but nowhere near pro-level. We ended up with a fairly noticeable uneven ridge on an interior wall. Also, the drywall texturing was inconsistent. He was not very familiar with the texture sprayer and failed to control the thickness of mixture. The texture started rather fine but gradually became coarser and more irregularly shaped. We eventually decided to pay another pro to fix the remaining problems.
Time and Schedule. Due to the limitations in staffing (one-to-two person crew most of the time), and frequent setbacks caused by quality problems, the project dragged on for much longer than anticipated. At one point the progress slowed down to a crawl, it took hours at a time to get a row of cut tiles laid right. The whole project also drained considerable amount of our own time and energy, because we needed to frequently visit the job site mid-day and check for quality problems.
In summary, they are probably a decent plumbing company, but do your own homework before hiring them for bathroom remodeling. Hiring them for this project is partly poor decision making on our part. One reason we chose Dempster is that it has a large number of 4 or 5-star reviews, but in hindsight, many of the reviews are for plumbing jobs, not remodelling. Another reason is that they have some photos on Yelp showing past project of marble installation of decent quality. However we later learned that the particular tile installer no longer works for them.
== UPDATE ==
Bill posted some photos, so we feel obliged to clarify a few points. The result looks nice from afar, but they mostly reflect overall design and material quality, instead of craftsmanship. The company didn't offer interior design service, and we did the design and material selection on our own. In the picture of the double vanity, the granite top was made by another vendor, and we picked the materials and hanged the mirrors ourselves. If there's anything to say about installation quality, it's that the right-side sink leaked for 3 weeks after installation before it was finally fixed. The company also broke a glass shelf of a Robern medicine cabinet, and we had to go to a glass shop to custom-make a replacement.
We initially didn't mention these details because our intention was to help fellow consumers make informed decisions, not to make the company look bad. We will not continue posting more detailed pictures, although many quality problems are readily visible upon closer inspection, despite of our constant monitoring, and after most jarring errors got fixed along the way. read more