I haven't had much experience with contractors, but I knew enough that when we had to find someone to repair major damage to our home after Hurricane Isabel came through, I should check with friends and relatives before choosing one. We chose Welsh Construction because it was one of the largest in the area and my parents had used them and were satisfied with their work.
Our experience couldn't have been more different. First there was the problem of getting anyone to respond--I could understand in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane they were busy, but months later they still weren't returning phone calls. The representative we had been working with quit and we didn't hear about it for two months. It took ten months to finally get them to start working on our house (ten months when we were living with black plastic over windows and roof) and then the work they did was shoddy. The roofers and siding guys they used were the only ones who seemed to know what they were doing. The painters did such a bad job that my husband and I redid the work ourselves. The windows they put in were so badly fitted that they had to be redone several times. One worker, doing interior repair, regularly fell asleep for long periods of time in our closet. My elderly father, a retired teacher, did a better job fixing drywall in our kitchen (different disaster) than the drywall guys who fixed the ceiling of a room. And a year later, we're still waiting for someone to come finish the work on some panes of glass in the problem windows. All of this I might even forgive (the work did get done eventually, after all) if only Welsh seemed to care--but it was clear to us in all of our dealings with them that they had more important work to do than repairing our tiny house. I would never use Welsh again.
more