Advanced Development and Building Services

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• By Harry B.

  June 20, 2022

  replace a side garage door

  I was a general contractor for 30+ years. Advanced development seems to be very professional initially. Their charge for replacing a side garage Standard exterior door no windows was $1850. That's actually on the high side but as I didn't want to be involved in the project whatsoever as I'm doing a kitchen remodel too, I was willing to pay it. Unfortunately, it started badly right from the beginning. They were scheduled to start on Monday and yet somebody showed up the Friday before to do the job. I was not home but I let them proceed to start the project. I had my son go out and take some pictures and the first thing we realized was the brand-new door they were installing was already beat up with dents in the steel and the wood jamb had 4 notable chips in the wood. They started by them removing the old door in which they cut the alarm wire. I was told that they didn't think it was operational because the wire was just hanging on the inside of the wall. I knew this to be incorrect as the alarm works. The brand-new door that they were installing also came with the knob and deadbolt reversed so the deadbolt was on the bottom not the setup of the original door. I pointed this out and they stated "oh we can go ahead and patch that". The next problem was the installer really did not have the correct experience for doing a door install. The initial install had a 16th inch gap on the hinge side of the door and almost 1/2 inch on the latch side of the door. The latch was only catching by 1/8 of an inch. I mentioned this with a phone call to Mario (I believe one of the owners although his name is not mentioned on the building license) and he told me that the guys just tacked the door for the weekend and that it would all get nailed in correctly. So the weekend went by and on Monday nobody shows up I don't hear a call from anybody but I'm busy doing a kitchen remodel. At 3 o'clock I text the office stating nobody has shown up and nobody has contacted me could they please tell me when they will be back. They respond oh somebody will be there tomorrow no apology or anything just somebody will be there tomorrow. The following day the same installer is back on the job and he believes he has fixed the gap but in truth all he did was straighten the gap so it's still almost a half inch gap. I then actually had to show him how to install the door correctly with shims in order for him to rectify the problem. Additionally, they had no solution for the alarm. Luckily, I figured this would be the case and I had ordered new alarm switches to be overnighted and installed. A separate guy showed up for the paint part of the job and had no paint. He was not part of their company. I had offered for them to use my paint but I did not have any primer for the raw wood. Well, he proceeded without primer. I asked him what he thought primer did for raw wood before paint and he stated it makes a better job (so he knew he should have primed before paint)

  The trim was never was caulked at The trim corners multiple nail holes were not filled. on the exterior wood joints have already opened up the day after they finished. This will allow rainwater to come right in and contact raw wood leading to premature failure and wood rot. If I had not intervened at multiple points, they would've closed the job up and would not have received a final payment from me and I would've launched a complaint at the registrar of contractors. At the end of the job, it is mediocre but the cost was not.
  Sadly, this is not uncommon in the valley and people who are not trained in the building industry receive subpar quality jobs giving good contractors a bad name.

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