GloRem

My name is Pamela. I have been a real estate professional in Howard County for over 40 years, first as a realtor and then as an appraiser. In my career I must have seen conservatively over 4,000 houses. I have seen all kinds of renovations and updates to existing properties. I have seen workmanship at all levels, from DIY disasters to premier craftsmanship. I want to share with you an experience I have had with GloRem LLC (gloremllc.com). I was first involved with this company 10 years ago when the company was a new venture for the owner, Evgeny Chernousov (“Eugene”). At that time, I found the company through Angie’s List and took a chance on a young and eager contractor whose bid to remodel 3 bathrooms was competitive in the market. What a serendipitous decision that became. Eugene and his workmen, from tile experts to framers to electricians to plumbers to painters were true artisans, and Eugene was involved every step of the way. He made sure there was a minimum of construction dust and unnecessary clutter. His insistence on expert execution of every task was consistent with what I discovered to be his perfectionist personality trait. After enjoying his exceptional work on my bathrooms for a decade, it became time to both renovate my basement and add a bath. I was delighted to discover that Eugene and his company, GloRem LLC, had become a premier basement remodeling company. After asking him to see my basement and give me a bid, his pricing was still, despite his considerable success, competitive. I was delighted to discover that, a decade later, not only was his work ethic unchanged, but, in addition, Eugene has become a sophisticated version of his enthusiastic and talented younger self. His bid was detailed and easily understood with each expense described. His work, on my second encounter with him, was just as enjoyable as my first…all work was completed ahead of schedule in impeccable fashion. I write all of this just to give any of you who are considering home renovations a heads up from a real estate professional who, in 40+ years, has truly “seen it all” and is delighted that true quality and pride of workmanship still exists.

My wife and I were looking to finish our basement, which is around 1,800 square feet, and we consulted with 5 different contractors. After a month of interviewing all the contractors, we selected Eugene's company, Glorem LLC (aka Basement Finishing Experts). His prices were competitive, especially compared to local (Howard County-based) contractors, and he was the only contractor that was able to offer us on-the-spot pricing, whereas every other contractor took a week or more to get back to us on pricing. Further, when we received pricing from other contractors, the other contractors seemed to have more variables whereas with Eugene, the core pricing of the basement was more clear - we understood that pricing would change based upon what custom items we'd select later, but the base pricing was both clear and competitive.

One of the main reasons we went with Eugene is that we believed we could trust him to deliver quality work in a timely fashion. After a lot of researching of on-line reviews, the vast majority of reviews (google, Angies List, houzz, etc..) on Eugene/ Glorem were very positive. When we first met Eugene, he didn't even bring up any of his positive online reviews, but he happily offered up referrals and showed many photos from his happy customer's projects- he even offered us to visit some of his recent projects that he finished (as compared with a couple of Howard County-based contractors we were turned off by, one had very few photos of their work, one didn’t offer any referrals, another contractor was pushy as he kept insisting on showing us photos of a $200k basement that he finished in HoCo even after we told him a couple of times that was way out of our budget. Another reason why we chose Eugene was because he didn't come off as a typical salesperson, but instead, Eugene came off as being someone we felt we could immediately trust, someone who was humble, yet confident of his work, someone who let his work speak for himself, and finally someone who we felt wouldn't nickel and dime us for every little change like some of the other contractors that we received pricing from. Although we never ended up taking Eugene up on his offers to visit some of his previous client's basements, the fact that he offered, to us, showed that he could back-up his work and that he had happy customers who would want to help him show their basements because he did such a great job for them-- and I'll talk more about this later as I became one of those happy customers.

Another main reason why we chose Eugene/ Glorem was because he had the best ideas compared to the other contractors on helping us design the basement we envisioned. For instance, we had two ugly basement foundation poles in an area where the bathroom had to be built (underground pipes/exhaust fans were located in this particular area), but the tricky part was that she also wanted two doors for the basement bathroom in this relatively tight space, one door for the adjacent bedroom and one bathroom door; however, these two foundation poles next to the rooms were right in the middle of the rooms and were an eyesore based upon their location. Some contractors said there was no space to put two doors there, or they drew up plans that didn't look right on paper, but Eugene was the only contractor that drew a floor plan that cleverly integrated the two foundation poles so that they'd be hidden behind the bathroom/bedroom/ utility walls and built the two entry doors (to bathroom and bedroom) next to each other, giving us that second bathroom door that my wife wanted- no other contractor had the vision that Eugene had; besides the trust factor, he was the best designer (I’d even say architect) we met out of all the contractors. He also had the vision to design our bar area in a location we didn't at first even consider, but after explaining how it would look better and how that location would also save money on plumbing to for the sink we wanted to have, we took his advice and we couldn't be happier with the outcome- he also recommended a tray ceiling for the bar area and barn doors for a refrigerator closet- all of which we didn’t even think about, and we were very happy with the final results.

Our basement is relatively large, but from the onset, he gave us a timeline (less than 3-months) that he felt very comfortable sticking to, and his company uses an on-line service called BUILDERTREND which is transparent on when things (e.g. framing, plumbing, painting, etc..) will be scheduled, shows payment schedule, and includes receipts for custom materials (e.g. faucets, vanity, etc..). He only took payments when certain milestones were completed from the contract. During the build, both Eugene and his Project Manager, Viktor, stayed on top of their employees, not that any supervision was needed, and was in constant touch with us during the whole build and was very responsive to anything we brought up. Towards the end of the build, and