Kec Remodeling Services

KEC Remodeling Services and its owner Kareem Coleman lied to me, took $6,500 of my money, left my building in worse condition than when they started and have harmed my ability to maintain ownership. RUN, RUN, RUN from Kareem and his company. He is a complete fraud. He said all of the right things to get as much money from me early in the project as he could, then he abandoned the job and stopped returning my calls.
1. I met him at a Home Depot parking lot, where he bragged that he was a full service contractor with 17 employees. I told him that I had just been ripped off by a contractor who took my 50% deposit and never did any work, then another contractor had strung me along for 5 months, doing substandard work until I pulled the plug. Kareem shook his head and told me that he was sorry about those experiences, but that he was a totally different type of contractor.
2. I let him do 1 job for $150 and he seemed to do it well.
3. I next told him I need the stairwell of a building completely upgraded so it could support a high-end rental I had just spent a ton renovating, but which was still not quite right. He looked at the rental and shook his head, saying that he could have that apt. "rent-ready" in 1 week, along with the stairwell, work on another rental property, and exterior work at both properties.
4. By the time he produced the first contract. the price got to $7500 and a $1500 initial payment became $3500. He started characterizing my payments as "deposits," designed to protect his workers, which put me on the defensive. He wanted to start even though I was heading out of town one Monday morning. I just trusted this guy so much, I agreed, even though the terms of his poorly written contract need a lot of work. I wish I had not fallen for that pressure tactic.
5. He kept asking for additional payments every 2 days, making a convincing case that he was making appropriate progress. But, I foolishly took his word that he was making progress. If I had only looked more closely, I would have seen that the work was substandard, the demo was poorly done, the new sheetrock was never taped, huge gaps appeared at the baseboards, so we can see clear into the basement. He had pulled out my new building-wide alarm system, electrical sockets and lights so that the building is now unprotected and, I fear, dangerous. He hadn't even started the exterior work at either building.
6. I noticed that he called me 3 days in a row to open the doors for his people -- a clear indication that he was not supervising them.
7. After a week had come and gone, Kareem insisted that he was only a day or so away. But, as we walked through the buildings and he minimized the work remaining, I became increasingly uneasy. He would show up maybe 2 more times over the next week.
8. DISTURBINGLY, at some point, he claimed that his sister had died, but never told me how that would impact his schedule, He just seemed to leave that out there as a permanent excuse. I think he is a liar who knew he wasn't going to finish and knew he had promised to complete work that he was incapable of doing.
9. When he had slowed down significantly on doing work, I told him that I had needed to turn around that $6500 I had given him in the 1 week he had committed to. I told him that I would be ruined if he didn't wrap up immediately.
10. He showed no reaction and only made a token appearance the next day.
CONCLUSION: After Kareem Coleman saw what other contractors had done to me, he took my last dollar. Now he wont't call me back or respond to my text messages. He is a monster, an animal. I plan to go after his licenses, cloud his title to his vehicles and any real estate he owns, paper his block on Warrington Avenue -- I think that business address is a house owned by one of his female relatives (or I will go wherever in Germantown he allegedly lives). I wish I had simply read the complaints here!!! I would have NEVER done business with him. Now it is too late and I will almost certainly have to sell my building. NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH KAREEM COLEMAN OR KEC REMODELING SERVICES!!!!

What seemed like a promising working relationship between Customer and Contractor turned sour, and became a struggle to try to end things in an amicable way.
KEC Remodeling showed great interest in undertaking our project on our house, but quickly under estimated the amount of level of work and failed to deliver on what he said he would during the initial hiring. From the amount of work crew he would bring, to the details of ordering windows and confirming the order, one thing kept being overlooked or falling through the cracks. This led to trying to work around these instances and eventually to us ending our project 85% of the way through Phase 1. There were 3 planned Phases, luckily for us 2 & 3 were contingent on the completion and our satisfaction with Phase 1.
KEC did produce decent work whenever the focus was put into the work that needed to be done. However, being stretched thin and lack of organization skills led to the delays on the work, windows orders being wrong, etc. Instead of taking responsibility for the mishaps, expect to hear that you, as the Customer, do not understand contracts or the level of work that it will take to do the job, to hearing that the secretary or other employees are to blame for orders being wrong, measurements not being right, etc.
If you do decide to hire KEC Remodeling, here are some suggestions to please consider and to take into consideration - -
- - Make sure to ask for and get a fully detailed contract before you sign. Go over the level of work that will be expected, and what is and was is not included on the price. This will help you avoid additional charges, hidden costs, etc.
- Know that when you sign you are signing on the based estimate of what KEC believes it will cost to complete the work vs. the actual cost at the end. So, be ready to set a fixed budget for each stage or for the specific work, and have written in the contract that you will get the remaining funds back.
- Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, pay the full amount up front for your project. This was a huge mistake on our part. We trusted KEC with the full amount of Phase 1, and ended the work about 85% of the way. He'll claim 95-100%, but that's impossible with the amount of work that was left undone that includes several windows, front porch shingles, additional concrete work, patching, sanding, painting, etc. You might hear that he demands the full amount because of how he pays his employees every Friday, etc. However, when you are sold on having 15 crew members working on your property, and you only get 2, there's no way that this holds up. You'll realize that KEC is looking to cut costs to gain a higher profit margin than what you agreed to, and that your funds will probably pay for other projects.
- Demand receipts for everything, or agree to purchase all of the materials yourself. This would have been a good approach for us, but we trusted KEC with this. In our experience we paid for all of the materials, and KEC kept and acquired left over items. We have been waiting for over 3 weeks for the receipts and project breakdown, but nothing has been delivered. We not only need this to see what funds we expect to receive back, but also for tax purposes for the work on the house.
- Set and stick to project timelines, and make sure that they are realistic and attainable. When we interviewed and decided to hire KEC we were told that it would take a few days to do the job. When asked about it, it turned to a week or 2. A month and a half went by before we decided not to move forward with KEC. This was even after having an honest sit down and conversation to give KEC an opportunity to salvage the relationship and complete the entire project with all 3 Phases.
- Set work schedules and hold KEC accountable to them. The first few weeks we expected him to start work between 8 - 8:30 AM, but KEC did not show up until 11 - 11:30 AM. Then they expected for it to be okay to work until 10 - 10:30 PM. We hired KEC because we were told they would be in early and out before 5 PM so that our Family would not be subjected to any interruptions. We had to endure coming home to a "not-as-clean home" because beds and furniture were not properly covered and dust and debris was everywhere. There was cleaning done by KEC, but not to the same level of expectations we were given before we hired them.
I could go on, but I do want to provide some positive feedback as well. If you can get KEC to focus on your home and work, the actual completed work is good. When KEC encountered some challenging situations, they found ways to make things work. This can be both a good thing, and a not so good thing, which is crucial to set the honest and right expectations from the start and to document everything along the way... for both parties. A detailed contract will help both Customer and the Contractor deal with unexpected situations, or at least set guidelines to follow during the course of the project.
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Update - May 2020
- Mr Coleman added some comments to this review that are false. He stated that my wife and I had exceeded our budget, which is false. If you read the review I mentioned that we had 3 Phases. Thank God for that. Phase 2 & 3 would have been to remodel the kitchen, bathroom, including plumbing and some electrical work. However, these were contingent of Phase 1 being done to our expectations. We paid Mr Coleman around $28K. Our overall budget, which we had secured with our Bank was for $70K. The Bank would release the funds for the work done, which proves his statement is false.

- Speaking of Banks, must Constructions Loans are paid out to Contractors as the work is completed. My wife and I had to convince our Bank to release the funds for Phase 1, telling them that we trusted Mr. Coleman. HUGE MISTAKE! That meant the bank would have to inspect his work before paying him. We initially gave Mr. Coleman a check for $17K, the 2 more for the added roof work, to come around $28K.

So please we urge anyone who considers using Mr. Coleman for any type of work, to read through all reviews, both good ones and more important the not-so flattering ones to guide you through your decision making. The not-so good ones speak volumes to the level of commitment and possible risks that you may putting yourself in. The fact that he wrote a false statement to make it sound like we did not have the budget, or it was out fault is proof of what you could end up dealing with.