We employed K & B Construction mostly long distance as our main residence is out of state. This fact had a lot to do with why we kept him on our project for as many
months as we did. He and his crew worked on and off for eight months starting an extensive remodel of an older home that we purchased recently in Buckland, MA.
The worst problems came toward the end of their presence on the job. We subsequently had to have our hardwood floors redone by another crew, because K & B Construction did such a terrible job, we felt we couldn't trust them to redo them a second time. They seemed to have no idea of what they were doing even though the owner assured us that they refinished hardwood floors all the time. We had paid them in full because they sent an invoice saying they were finished we didn't immediately realize what a bad job they did until someone else was in there and told us, that was 5.2K down the drain. We paid someone else 4.5K to completely re-sand and re-apply 3 new coats of polyurethane and they were thankfully able to salvage the floors.
K & B had not removed all old finish when they sanded so there was an 18" X 4' area of floor that ended up blonde in color and rest of floor had a dark patina, it was next to wall so there would be no hiding it with a rug. There were many, many fiber inclusions left over from the blown in insulation and other small debris particles that they didn't thoroughly vacuum and remove before applying finish. There was a ring from a gallon can where someone had set it down on floors that weren't completely dry. The hard
wood was gouged in some areas where they had created a divot with sander, they said they didn't do a light sanding between coats and it showed, there were many areas with wood fiber burrs sticking up. Then there was the fiasco of them saying the distributer had sold them glossy finish in cans labeled satin. The latter may have been true but we couldn't afford to have them re-do the floors, we realized they were clearly too unknowledgeable about the entire process.
I paid K & B for $2,400K worth of tongue and groove pine paneling, it was paid in full in November of 2011 and when K & B was "let go" in January 2012, he still had not delivered it nor returned the $2,400K, nor does he return phone calls, emails or phone texts asking if he is going to deliver the wood or return our money.
The new carpenter has had to remove sheet rock in several areas and just re-do some of the work that I paid K & B to do because its of an inferior quality. The plasterer couldn't apply thin coat plaster to a wall that didn't have studs placed according to code leaving the walls unstable. The tile person couldn't tile walls that were 21/2 inches out of plumb.
I did witness them removing exterior clapboards last summer that I'd paid for, from our job site to use on someone else's job and another time they'd loaded onto their trailer a beautiful old flat, hearth stone from a defunct beehive oven that was part of a fireplace that they were dismantling. I only happened to arrive on job site unexpectedly both times and so saw them doing this. I told them I wanted the stone, they then broke it in half when removing it from trailer. Both times they made lame excuses but it did leave me wondering how often did I pay for materials that were used elsewhere? They also removed some hand tools that belonged to me, I told them about it and they said they'd return them but never did. One was a brand new hammer and crowbar, so I'm pretty sure it was not the sort of thing a person would have picked up by mistake.
The owner duplicated charges on invoices that I had to point out to him, at least one item was never done though I paid for it on an earlier invoice. I paid this person about 65K over the 8 months they were on our job site. Most short comings were discovered toward the end of having K & B Construction working for us. I think most people would recognize their short comings sooner but from September to present we've been dealing with the project long distance.
We would not hire this company in future. read more
