We hired Red Robin to demolish existing concrete stairs to a basement apartment and cinderblock walls that were also supporting a large concrete slab/porch above the walkout. The old walls were buckling and causing the porch to sink. The plan was to cut back the slab as close to the house as possible and redo the walls and stairs. We also have a tenant living in the basement who is, luckily, easy going and understanding, and we told Red Robin that he would need to access to his apartment at the end of their workdays. We were told this would be around a 2 week project but it ran into 4 weeks overall.
We really wanted to like these guys and contacted them because of all the great reviews. John came out and was easy to talk to and offered more insight into the job than other estimators we had contacted, so we felt good about selecting them. They weren't the cheapest quote we got but they were competitive. There were at least 6, maybe more, different guys who came out to do the work over the course of the month and they were all nice and easy to talk to when approached.
However, there were a few disappointing parts of the job. It took longer than it should have for a few reasons. The second day on the job, the two guys who were removing the stairs were only here for 3 hours because they started late due to a course they were scheduled to take. The third day only one guy was here to finish the majority of the stairs. This meant he was the single guy breaking up large concrete stairs, shovelling out dirt and concrete pieces, wheelbarreling it to his truck, and one by one lifting individual pieces that must have been 100lbs each into the truck. This ended up being typical - only one guy worked most days during the job which surprised us because it was obvious the guys could have used a helper for what they were doing. It also would have made the project go faster.
The first week was jarring because it involved digging out lots of wet dirt, which they just piled in various locations directly on our interlock patio, leaving a huge mess. We had a waterproofing contractor come out a few years ago who obviously dealt with much more mud and was able to leave our backyard in great shape by laying out tarps that they put the mud on. I really don't understand why that wasn't part of what these guys did originally, but it wasn't until we mentioned it that they came the next day with tarps to clean it up.
Although they told us we didn’t need to be around while they worked, we felt like we needed to since the different guys that came didn't seem to be aware of the extent of the job and had to be reminded that we had a tenant so temporary stairs (that we provided) were put in place. We had to delay a trip by a night so we could meet with Mike to talk about a change in the job, which resulted in them requoting it (twice), but turned out the footings they thought they had found didn't exist so we went back to the original quote anyway.
Some other ‘minor' issues included that the new walls they built coming off our house are not straight, so the walkout and stairs angle to the left, and although they told us the blocks would be filled with cement, not every block was. I’m not sure if we were supposed to know this, but considering we told them we were going to anchor our main floor stairs to the top of the wall, I’m surprised they weren’t filled because it doesn’t leave us much to anchor to if they’re hollow. Considering these were brand new walls, they really should have been straight and if cost was a factor in filling the blocks, they should have raised it with us. We were also told they were going to come with a pressure washer to clean up the interlock but I'm not sure if that happened. Cement was also splattered on the screen/storm door. We were told that work would start between 8-830pm each day but most days it wasn't until 9 or later. Two Sundays they started loud work at 7-730am (drill + saws) and we felt bad for our neighbours. We felt a few times like we were being told one thing only to have something different happen.
The most disappointing part however, is that we weren't consulted about the construction of the new stairs. Once I saw that one of the workers was planning on putting in 6 stairs, I explained that we only had 4 originally, and then was treated as if I was crazy because he thought they would be too steep. He ended up putting in 5 stairs but they were so close to the basement door that someone would have had to stand on the last stair to open the door to enter the apartment. I can’t even explain how upset we were about this. I called Dave to discuss this, and he originally took a tone that suggested he thought we were being unreasonable and that they had done a good job for us. It wasn’t until I started pointing out all the issues we had with them that he and Mike came out the next day to see it in person. They agreed it hadn’t been done properly at that point and then we entered into the 4th week of work, with them demoing the new stairs to redo them.
I would understand if our job was more complicated than most of what they take on (their reviews look like a lot of chimney work/tuckpointing/etc) or if we were one of their first few jobs of the season and they were ironing out some kinks. They did do a good job with supporting the top porch slab, getting it out of there, and building new walls. There's no doubt that everything is an obvious improvement over what we had. We were just surprised that with so many good reviews we had such a drastically different experience. This work isn't cheap. The whole project felt unnecessarily long, like no one was communicating with each other, and that the only way we got updates was by asking for them. Dave commented that we were in constant communication but honestly I think that's because we were the main initiators to try to understand what was going to happen next since it was moving so slow. We asked for a general order/timeline of work/process and never got it. These are pretty simple seeming things that would have gone a long way to raise our confidence in them.
After the job completed, with the stairs finally going in as they were originally, we received an email from Dave letting us know that after what they experienced with our job, they were going to start keeping more detailed notes, measurements and photos about everything as it existed before demo, and that they would make sure there was consistency with workers on site. This is obviously good going forward, but it was extremely stressful to be the homeowner that had to go through this in order for them to see a need for this process.
