Construction Specialties

I hired this company for a big project on my home 2.5 years ago. Robert said the project would take 3 weeks and it took 3 months. He started with poor workers who slept in my garage, brought their 2 year old to the job site and did bad, dangerous work. When I say bad, I mean the next set of workers tore out everything that had been done and started over kind of bad. This was only the first redo on the project. The had to redo the entire siding after the first subcontractor put it all up and failed inspection.
In addition to an overly long and stressful renovation, I have had to redo a lot of the work myself over the last 2.5 years. I have had to rehang EVERY door they replaced (replacing one of them entirely), I have had to redo the electrical they had already «fixed» once, and the list goes on.
In the times I have called Robert and complained, because I shouldn’t have to rehang a door within 12 months for example, he has told me he would be happy to bid me a price to fix his company’s shoddy work. He said it was like driving 600 miles on new tires and then expecting a refund. This is ridiculous. A construction company’s work shouldn’t fall apart in under a year and it continues to fall apart every day.

Our review is almost identical to Denise P.‘s review from 2 years ago! We hired construction specialties September 2014 for an add on to our kitchen and a full remodel. Everything started out fine and seemingly on schedule. We were assured and ‘promised’ it would be done by Christmas. Though its been told to us over and over there is no where in our contract that says an end date. Mistake #1. Robert O’Brien hired poor workers and left them unsupervised in our house day after day– to us coming home to them smoking in our house and our food having been rummaged through. He was not here to supervise that or the poor work being done. It wasn’t until my husband said enough to them sloping drywall around horribly that Rob came in and fired them. That left us with no one to work on our house for 5 days straight– at a period where we should have been close to finishing. To make matters a hundred times worse we lost all contact with the company– no returned emails, no returned phone calls– nothing! When rob finally made contact he made excuses– sick, not typical to work on a weekend (though his workers were expected to be there working day and night) etc… Once we finally came into contact and were ‘back on track’ we all of a sudden had a change order that had tacked on $ 12,000 + to our bill. Some items were legit– but I went through it with a fine tooth comb and questioned it all– from dumpsters that we hadn’t even had, port o potty that they never had for the workers, why #‘s seem to have jumped from our original bid all of a sudden. It seemed like he was getting back at us for irritating him about the missed days no one came to work on our house. Another set of workers were now in place to work– a very nice older gentleman in his 60’s + and occasionally some kids that were maybe in their early 20’s– none of whom had much experience in all that Rob was asking them to do– but they tried their best and got our kitchen back on track. Their lack of knowledge and experience and overall inability to do the tasks meant days upon days of drywall being done and then redone the next day, and our cabinets being installed noticeably crooked. Take #3 another set of workers coming in to fix those problems– these guys were better. Knew what they were doing and straightened our cabinets. Rob needed to hire an actual tile guy to do our floors (instead of round one of inexperienced workers that he had originally planned on) he did a great job. Then came knocking on our door saying Rob’s check bounced and his second payment is past due. Threatened to put a lien on our house. Countertop guy– same exact scenario a week or two later. And yes as you can expect– the last of the workers showing up at my families door at 7 at night saying the same thing– Rob didn’t pay them!!! We felt bad for all these people– but the bottom line is we paid Rob and it seemed Rob was shuffling money around and is unable to pay his people hired. As of December 29,2014– we were given a detailed binder full of everything that still needed to be done and the dates to be completed. The last of anyone working on our house have not been seen since January 31^st 2015– and most of the work is done… There are a few things that were not and I inquired to Rob about an ETA– happy that I have a functioning kitchen but annoyed that we have not wrapped this all up.
It will not let me write more then 5000 characters– so I am continuing my review to show the emails between Rob and myself the last couple weeks. He pretty much writes the review himself with his utter rudeness and overall unprofessionalism
As of March 9, 2014– yesterday Rob sent an email saying we can finish the job ourselves and to expect a lien on our house in the next 30 days… From what we are not sure. We have about $ 1000 left to pay them– that in a previous email said keep it and do the stuff around the house we didn’t need them for or is it from one of th many scorned workers that he has not paid. Or is it an empty threat? Who knows.