First time reviewing a business in Yelp but long time reader!
10 years ago, my wife and I hired a contractor to remodel our kitchen. Needless to say we did not have a good experience mainly because I like things done neatly and on-time.
Well, this time we decided to do a major remodel of the rest of our house. It included completely redoing 3 bathrooms, removing popcorn ceiling, removing carpet and putting hardwood floors, painting whole house, crown molding and base boards, redoing stairs and rails, new recess lights, replacing all doors in the house including garage/front doors.
My wife and I interviewed 4 contractors and they were all in the same ballpark of cost.
Because of the great reviews on Open Hand Remodeling, I decided to leave them for the last proposal. The day Mike showed up, he first listened to what our vision for the remodel was. He then proceeded to show us in his iPad the previous work they have done on other houses to get an idea of their finished products.
Mike was not pushy and really wanted to make sure we understood the different kinds of materials that were available for us, the difference in cost, and the magnitude of the project. He gave us a time frame to finish the project that was reasonable. His price was not the cheapest but he also let us know that he was not going to nickel and dime us during or at the end of project.
One of the things that made us choose them for our job was the fact that he said that he needed to test the popcorn ceiling for asbestos (my house was built in 1978). He said that even though it might cost more to remove (he covered the difference), he needed to make sure it was done properly to avoid exposing the workers or our family to asbestos dust (I have the report it contained asbestos and the certificate of proper disposal now). Other contractors said it did not matter to their workers if it had asbestos.
Once they opened one of the walls in a bathroom, they discovered it had wood damage. This was the first test to see if he would keep his word as one of the workers said to me that it was not in "his budget" to fix the rotted wood. One call to Mike and he took care of it by re-framing the bath area without added cost.
On the day the crew was supposed to start putting new hardwood floors, I noticed that they came in the morning, left and did not come back until a day later. When I inquired why they missed a day of work, they told me Mike was not happy with the floor barrier they had brought and wanted to use commercial cork sub-floor to dampen the sound for 2nd floor. Again, even though this was more expensive material, he did not charge us for upgrade.
For the stair rails, I sent him a picture I found on the Internet of the design we wanted. He had them custom made. However, when they came to install them, they did not fit properly and there was a 1 inch gap between rail and ceiling. The rail maker tried 2 times to fix it but it was not fitting properly. Mike had them remake it to fit properly.
Now, I told Mike my biggest request was that they needed to finish the project on-time. A six week project took seven weeks due mainly that we had to wait a week for the asbestos crew to start removal of ceiling. The painting crew worked long hours to try to finish the project but we were still a week behind schedule. His response was that he was not going to sacrifice quality to finish the job quickly. I got to meet most of the crew that worked in my house, yes most of them speak mainly Spanish but try to find otherwise in southern California. The crew really took pride in their work and
at the end of the project, their work exceeded my expectations. My wife and daughter are very happy with the finished product. I recommended him to my business partner and they already started remodeling her house.
Again, I don't write reviews on businesses but I felt I needed to say how great Mike and his crew do their work. read more