the Renovators

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• By D. L.

  February 14, 2020

  Renovate 6 bedroom home

  Chris Emerson and his team at the Renovators are nice people, but do NOT do a good job of sweating the details or assuring that finishes are done well.
  We had Chris and his team as the General Contractor for a major renovation of our home in 2016-17. We had stayed in another property they had built and we liked the finishes. We were clear from the start that we were hiring them for their attention to detail and expertise with the finishes that could make our home look perfect. It turns out that this was our greatest mistake. Chris does NOT have a good sense for high quality finishes and could only do the work he did before because there was an excellent, detail oriented, finish focused architect or design firm as the first point of contact with the customer. Not The Renovators.
  We learned this the hard way. Do NOT EXPECT that Chris or his team has that expertise or even cares enough to proactively try to make things right.

  Although The Renovators took a supervisory fee of almost $100K and marked up the subs more than +13% (for another $100K+ fee!), they did not supervise the sub-contractors adequately or provide a high standard of quality throughout the details of the renovation. We even had to struggle to get them to follow through on a punch list with us.

  A few examples of the below level quality we have had to deal with. (When I say "deal with" it means that we did, of course, find contractors who could take care of and fix the issues with additional separate fees as Chris' team did not fix things nicely):

  1) all door hardware were not installed properly with proper measurement and installation. The Renovators even used the wrong items in some areas and didn't realize it until much later. We have had to have other contractors reinstall all the door hardware and are preparing to repaint all the doors as they were damaged from the sub-par installation.

  2) our French Doors which open to the ocean were not installed correctly and leaked. The Renovators had replaced the door hardware, but not checked for proper alignment or closure to make sure there were no leaks. We had to pay mover $20K just to fix the leak damage from this.

  3) interior painting was not supervised and had many flawed areas. The Renovators did not manage the schedule of work well.

  4) cabinet maker introduced by The Renovators did not do a professional job of installing the cabinets and excess sawdust left behind ended up molding and causing additional costs.

  5) appliance install was done by the cabinet maker introduced by The Renovators, but many appliances were not installed correctly, i.e. dishwasher fell out when opening, refrigerator feet were cut off voiding important manufacturer warranty, refrigerator not installed well which caused the internal boards to be damaged, stove top not installed well which destroyed the boards, etc.

  6) plumping work was not checked or managed by The Renovators and we still can not use our biggest soaking tub and water (cold and hot) does not work properly in some of the bathrooms.

  7) skylights installed by The Renovators do not work. They are supposed to power open and close, but do not.

  8) The Renovators almost threw away the pool control unit mistakenly leaving it in a rubbish pile for over a month - the unit would have cost more than $4K to replace

  9) They broke our gate motor which had worked fine before the renovation - $4K to fix.

  And many other issues. If you need further input on the Renovators or more specifics, please feel free to contact us.

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