Nathan Casey came to us through our designer, Anne Norton-Dingwall. Anne was a wonderful designer and we loved working with her. She described Nathan as detail-oriented, an artist, and a likable guy. When we met Nathan, he was personable, assured us he has a great team of people working with/for him, that he would be overseeing all aspects of the job along every step of the way, that our job would be a priority and that he had a critical eye for detail. After negotiating the estimate, we signed on with him and confirmed the start date.
We were set to start on a Monday. We checked in with Nathan the week before (since we had signed the contract several weeks prior) and we weren't getting a response. Then we heard from him and he said that his project manager knew all about the job and that the pm would be there. We called the pm and he knew nothing about the job. We reached out to Nathan again and got no response. Monday, starting day, and no one showed up. At some point that day, Nathan reached out and said he will come by on Wednesday.
Strike one. Disrespectful + poor response time with emails, texts, phone calls. This is no way to run a business.
Things finally started moving along with demo and construction. Nathan had asked us to have all of our materials and fixtures onsite prior to the project starting, which we did. We figured this would be so he could look through everything before putting them in place and piece out the puzzle so things went smoothly. Well, that didn't happen.
There were countless times that we had to call Nathan in the evening to make sure he was going to be there the next day to keep things on track because there were flaws in the work that was done that day. Nathan was always delayed in getting back to us. It was a constant hassle to get a response from him.
The safety of our home was one of my concerns given that different workers were in and out and different times while we were at work during the day. In one instance, I came home to find our front door unlocked. After expressing my alarm about this, Nathan and one of his main workers worked out a way that they would make sure that would not happen again (the worker would stop by on his way home at end of day to make sure whoever was working that day had locked the door).
As far as his workers, they were all very nice people. However, the work was not top-notch.
Here are a few details:
Tile - Chipped tiles were used, placement was crooked and needed fixing, wrong color grout on repair of cracked tiles and had to come back multiple times to correct, and we weren't notified about a shortage in tile until very late in the process and the job was delayed few weeks while waiting for the new order to come in.
Sheetrock-It was the first time this sheetrock finisher was working for Nathan. Nathan never met him before being hired and didn't even come meet him on the job site. A couple of months after the job was complete, he showed up randomly at our house on a Saturday because Nathan hadn't paid him. He eventually got paid, but we shouldn't have subs coming to our house because Nathan didn't return his emails or calls.
Sheetrock finish showed major imperfections that had to be repaired twice after initial painting. The first time, he had his inept painter try to fix them, then he had another person (other than the sheetrock contractor he blindly hired to do the original work) finish the job.
Painting-Painter did a sloppy job cutting the walls in with the ceiling. Another painter was used to come fix it and at that time we changed the wall color.
Mirror install-Nathan didn't read the mirror cut sheet we supplied and his electrician had to run another power supply after the job was complete so the mirror's night light would work.
Overall, the bathroom is beautiful. However, the process of getting there was NOT smooth. We did communicate our frustrations to Nathan at each point we encountered them. Sometimes he took accountability, other times he tried to talk his way out of it and most times his response included the point that he was extremely busy and overwhelmed with the responsibilities of growing his business. My response to that is that he shouldn't have taken on our job if he couldn't give it 100%. Because when you trust someone with this type of job and you are paying them, you expect 100%.
I hope this review is helpful to people shopping around for a contractor. read more