Last year we hired Michael & Alan to do a renovation for our top two floors of our 3-bedroom house. They were very open with us, before we signed the contract with Wood & House, that they had never done such a large-scale renovation before, however they claimed that they had all the required knowledge, skills and experience to compete the required work for our contract, and assured us they would complete it on time. They were open to disclosing their basis of pricing and were quite friendly.
To our surprise, they decided to self perform most of the work, which we did not expect from a general contractor. Their tiling and woodwork were okay, however they lacked other skills like painting and floor finishing. They attempted to refinish our floors three times before they subbed it out to a specialist company. Another surprise was that they had no cost-effective supply chain. As an example, their tiling contractor discount they offered us was higher than the retail pricing we found on our own, and the quartz countertop place they directed us to was double the cost of what we ended up purchasing, for the same product, elsewhere. In the end we sourced and purchased most of the materials on our own, from bathroom fixtures, toilets, sinks, mirrors, lights, countertops, etc.
Michael and Alan had a hard time to keep track of the details of our project, even though we hired a separate designer that provided them with detailed information and drawings.
They hired what appears to be an unlicensed plumber to do our project and neither Michael or Alan were able to recognize the problems which led to a fridge leak that went all the way to the basement, ruined our new hardwood floor under the fridge, destroyed the side of our new wood kitchen cabinet, cracked and discoloured part of our basement ceiling, and thus caused us major problems and delays.
Another small example of deficiencies was that they were unaware what material of caulking they should use around our kitchen backsplash and bathtub, and it cracked and separated almost right away. There were many other areas where they failed. Everything from not putting in screws to secure our wall oven in place to reworking our front door new locks many times so it could be closed correctly. To their credit, they tried to fix the deficiencies but seemed to lack the necessary skills and did not want to sub things out.
What we didn't realize when we hired Wood & House, as our general contractor, they had no ability to plan the sequence of events properly, which is critical for any renovation, especially one of our scale. This led to massive delays which caused them to be two months late on a three-month project. There is still work to be done, by outside trades (hired by us) to fix their mistakes and omissions.
When it was clear that they were no longer finishing the work and wanted to be paid, they had the audacity to initially ask us for 5x of what the remaining balance was, only to correct it to 3x of the actual balance. In the end, after many unpleasant emails back and forth, we settled on the actual balance that was due for the work completed.
Michael and Alan overstated their, and their workers, capabilities in doing the necessary work to get a good outcome on a large complex job. At best, they are handymen, and fall far short of what a general contractors ability to manage a large project should be. We will not be giving them our second contract to finish our basement.
