Urban Oasis Builders

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• By Howell

  May 26, 2020

  Kitchen remodel

  $50,000

  Very professional. Our experience could not have been better. Fair and honest quote and contract that outlined process and expectations. Workers were very skilled and kind. Daily the workers arrived in time, worked hard and cleaned up after themselves. The quality of work was superb. We are so happy with our new floors and kitchen renovation.

• By Tom V.

  April 16, 2019

  Bathroom remodel to accommodate wheelchair

  When we met the owner, Ken Mauck, we were impressed and felt like we had the right company.

  The job was started on our small bathroom at the end of July 2018 to make it ADA compliant as my wife has a rare cancer and 9 vertebral fractures and the sunken shower had 2 steps down. The bathroom was not completed until after Thanksgiving. I had requested that the job be completed by the 1st of October, and the owner assured us it could be done. My wife had an appointment in October with specialists at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NY that we had to cancel due to the delays.

  Our main complaint with Urban Oasis is that they stalled and stretched out the job to the point that our cost was nearly twice as much as the estimate that he originally quoted us in a bid that also included raising the floor and enclosure of our back patio. The entire job couldn’t be completed by October so we settled for the bathroom first. Ken recommended and convinced us that with this small of a job, rather than a bid, it would be best to charge by the hour ($45-$65), plus materials, plus 20% of all expenses. Naively, and the fact that every day stepping down the two steps into the shower was another risk of falling, we agreed.

  It was disclosed that the carpenter’s pay was $18 hr. We were charged $45 hr. plus 20% of the full $45, a markup on the markup where Ken profited $36hr. per carpenter. When Ken himself worked at $65 hr, he marked that up too. The job supervisor, at $65 plus markup on markup, cost us $624/workday for nearly four months. Discussions with other builders said the job should not have exceeded $35 thousand but our total ended up over $60 thousand, the overrun caused by Ken’s labor and labor markup. What work in that small space would take so long when the bathroom is only 6x13 feet and the shower 6x4 feet, and subcontractors did all the electric, plumbing, and tile work (at reasonable cost)?

  There was a lot of wasted time, while we lived out of suitcases in the guest bedroom, and in addition to all the extra cost, it certainly was an exhausting and stressful experience for two over 65. Communicating with Ken was difficult as he always defended the extra amount of time taking to complete the job by bringing up insignificant requests (like asking for 15 minutes to help bring some Christmas boxes down from the attic) that didn’t add up to more than a day and a half of work, never mentioning that I would come in after they left to speed up the project by painting the two new doors, trim, and borders, and general patch, caulk, and touch up.

  All the plumbing, electric, and tile work was performed by unsupervised contractors, all of which had to return to correct major errors such as backward pipe install and mis-patterned tile. I asked Ken why the tile man didn’t sort by color the natural Travertine before setting-he replied it would have taken too much time. In the interest of time and expense, we did our best to tell the tile layer to leave the just laid mis-matched tile as it was in the closet but he chipped it out because he only spoke Russian and didn’t understand. The trouble trying to find replacement matching Travertine, traveling from S. Orlando to Altamonte, in addition to the frustration of our bathroom getting done at turtle speed, caused us frustration and anxiety. I might add that in the middle of the job, we were told that they wouldn’t be here a couple of days since they had another job to finish up, further delaying our job to go beyond the promised date. After work was completed, we hired our own electrician to do additional work and in the process, he corrected two improperly wired switches and a new uncovered junction box in the attic that was a potential fire hazard.

  The bottom line is that we feel the job took much longer than expected attributed to unnecessary delays and excessive cost with his markup on his profit in hourly wages charged.

  We agree that he is a very pleasant man, and we blame ourselves for having agreed to this type of contract that my gut told me would not have a happy ending. We definitely feel we were taken advantage of and are disappointed that we can’t begin our next project to complete what we planned prior to any decline in my wife’s medical condition.

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