Richs Construction

The owner Eric Prchal is a good salesman in that he will make everything sound like it is going to be great, but unfortunately for me and my wife it was not the case. We hired Bella Remodeling to do a full finishing of our basement and remodel our upstairs bathroom. Eric is a very personable guy and he comes off like he does care, but the way he runs his business leaves customers susceptible to subpar work and long completion times. For us he quoted a 3 month job, and he was able to accommodate the tight budget that we had. Neither I nor my wife have ever gone through a housing remodel, and after our experience we will never hire a general contractor ever again. That is to say a contractor that doesn’t do the work themselves, but hires subcontractors to do the various jobs needed. To make a long story short it turned into a 10 month project.
We were riddled with periods of no progress being made as different subcontracting crews were brought in and out. A big problem we found with that is that when a new crew was brought on they had no idea what was going on, and me or my wife constantly had to babysit the crews. Poor communication between Eric, the project manager, and the subcontractors was constantly a problem. The quality of work was terrible, as it seemed like he found the cheapest crews possible, and we had to give up a lot of things we wanted just to get the project done in the time it was. I am going to call Eric a liar in that he repeatedly assured us that the crews working on our house were the same crews that he has used to remodel his own house. There is no way a contractor would allow these crews to knowingly work on his own house based on the quality of work. Our house was repeatedly left messy after crews left, and the crews never seemed to have their own cleaning supplies. They resorted to using ours and it resulted in a shop vacuum being broken and a sink in the basement being so clogged with paint that I had to have Eric send a plumber. Even after the bulk of the remodel was done we repeatedly had to have crews come out to fix stupid things like repainting walls, rehanging doors, fixing mud and tape, and fixing cracked sheet rock. Things that if they were done by a quality crew would have been done right the first time. We even had instances where our furniture was damaged and the sheet rock crew cut our cable TV and internet cords in the basement and when I confronted them about it they denied it. Another instance was when we confronted Eric, because we believed our ceiling had not been painted the white we wanted. We even had one of his own painters tell us it wasn’t painted, but Eric insisted it was. The owner of a company should be doing whatever is necessary to ensure the happiness of their customer, not arguing over whether something was done or not.
Eric spreads himself very thin and the customers are the ones who suffer with long build times and poor quality. The only good thing is the electrician he hired was very good and did an excellent job. He even gave us his card and said if we have any problems to contact him directly. The plumber he hired did poor quality work and we have had a lot of problems with simple plumbing things like having to re-caulk the tub where it meets the tile. Overall it was a terrible experience and I hope you reconsider using Bella Remodeling for your needs. At this point we even refuse to have them come back and fix things that are falling apart. Eric told us that he gets a lot of business from word of mouth, and I can say with pure conviction in my heart that I wish I could go back in time and not hire him.