Gaspar's Construction

A few years ago, I had the worst experience of my life with any provider: with Gaspar's, on an extensive home remodel. It went about $150K over budget. But it wasn't just the money: it was the way I felt we were treated, consistently, throughout a project that spanned seven months. During this time, there were at least twenty specific incidents where I came to question what I was being told. We saw inflated cost estimates: e.g., a $600 estimate to install a toilet, $850 estimate to install a light in the basement stairwell. As with the other reviewers, we saw lots of vague "design costs" being charged. We came to question the billing at every turn: for example, we saw at least two cases where we knew a worker had left after only half a day but we were charged for the full day. We were billed for full use of a dumpster, even though I personally witnessed Gaspar's Construction workers bringing material from other construction sites to put in that dumpster. When we raised our concerns about the project being way over budget, the response from Gaspar's Construction was "so?". There are countless other examples. And the dollars just kept climbing, with no end in sight. I have never felt so helpless. We saw incredible defensiveness, even outrage, whenever we expressed less than happiness with the project. In fact, I felt that the consistent attitude from this provider was that if the customer wasn't happy, the fault for that somehow lay with the customer. Later, at the end of the project, we had great trouble getting unfinished work addressed (we called them back at least five times to touch up a badly botched paint job on a railing), but you can believe that we got lots of calls regarding making our final payment. We finally did pay, in full, just to get the upsetting incident behind us. At the time, I wrote Gaspar Construction a letter, stating, "At this point, we prefer just to put this very unpleasant experience behind us, even though that means paying for things we should rightfully not." more

We remodeled our whole home and it was a huge success. All of Gaspar's staff performed in an excellent manner and timelines were met. We had weekly meetings to discuss progress and possible changes. The most important thing to me was that the architect, designer and contractor were all under one roof. The lead carpenter, Art, was easy to work with and I actually miss seeing him and my weekly meetings with Cathy and Mark. I have already recommended Gaspar's to my friends who might needs some work and look forward to a long friendship with the entire staff. more

Thanks to Gaspar's I have a new front porch and master bedroom for my Craftsman style home in Wallingford. Gaspar's is a design build firm that helped me to put my dreams on paper and then construct what had been designed. The project was professionally managed and the end result was on-time and right on budget with no change orders. Gaspar's is a general contractor that works with their own group of pre-screened sub-contractors. I give them an excellent rating. more