Note: This is a review of our kitchen renovation.
TL;DR - Beau is good but the quality was awful and all of our delays were related to the team needing to fix their own mistakes.
Ok first of all - it sucks that I can't give OCHS a good review, because Beau is a good guy, and he GETS IT when you talk details and vision for your project. He listens to your concerns and makes you feel like you're in good hands.
Problem is, the service pretty much stops there.
Communication down to the subcontractors is non-existent in both directions, since once he gets your money Beau kind of disappears from the project and leaves you to deal with the Project Manager he's assigned. And I do get it, that's how management works... but at what point do you become accountable for the work product of the people you manage?
Subcontractor quality was atrocious on almost every section of the renovation. Highlights below, and they are not even remotely close to a complete list of what went wrong:
(1) Everything (sadly, not an exaggeration) the electrician did was wrong and had to be redone. Not to mention the damage he did to newly-laid flooring and the walls when installing our ovens. Or leaving the power off to the house for no reason beyond "he forgot to turn it back on."
(2) Flooring guy ignored instructions on the underlay we chose and shredded up baseboards, quarter-round, and t-moulding we had wanted to try to reuse.
(3) Drywall guy managed to get texture spray on pretty much all our belongings, even ones on the other side of the house (to this day I can't figure out how he managed that...), and then he just never showed up again and our Project Manager had to finish up the work himself. And for the record, no one ever came back to clean the texture off my windows, doors, floors, staircase, etc.
(4) Tile backsplash was laid unevenly, grouted poorly (I could do it better, and that's saying something b/c I can barely open a window by myself), and not cleaned appropriately after grouting, so our beautiful tiles were clouded with grout haze until I sucked it up and cleaned them myself.
(5) Plumbing not moved to correct locations which caused giant, unnecessary cuts in our beautiful (excruciatingly expensive) cabinets. In fact, all the subs pretty much scratched our cabinets to hell in some way, leading to multiple trips by our cabinet guy to fix all the dings, dents, scuffs, inexplicable cuts in the wood for poorly routed plumbing, etc.
Side note: I got really tired of our PM trying to tell me I was crazy for expecting clean and evenly-laid tiles or floors laid to my (not demanding) specifications. It feels like I got more excuses than I did actual, quality work. Mostly because we got very little quality work... we're still finding things we hate about the way they did the reno, but I dread saying anything to Beau about it because even if he does agree to fix it, I just don't want any of them inside my house ever again.
I'll spare you the sob story of how the team managed to lock me out of the house at 2am and then tried to blame it on me... But I will tell you this: they WILL be careless with your stuff, leave garbage (not demo-related debris, just actual trash) everywhere, and disappear for days with no explanation. You expect delays - but not when they've shut off power to your house or left giant pieces of drywall on your front lawn in the middle of the day and just never came back.
The horrible thing is, we purposely chose OCHS knowing they were pricier, expecting better quality and service. We had multiple recommendations for them and thought if they were so highly regarded it was worth the extra money. Now we're left with no money, a kitchen that still needs work, and nightmares about the bathroom reno we have to do.
I won't be using OCHS again, but if you decide you like Beau enough to take the risk on his extended team, be sure to *make him* prioritize your project (i.e. actually show up every now and then). Otherwise, you will go from being an easy going, flexible, and mostly normal human to a scarred, feral cat who obsesses over every detail because literally every detail is wrong. Good luck. read more