We just got a new roof on our house. We got a bunch of bids. I decided that A Better Roofing and Bruce's Roofing were my two favorites.
We had a leak and Bruce's was able to do our roof almost two months sooner than A Better, so we went with Bruce's. I regret that decision.
Like all companies, your experience is based on the individuals who work for the company. Here is who Bruce's sent to our house:
foreman: Gabriel
(Gabriel worked with 6 men to replace the actual roof)
"carpenter": Mike G. (with a young assistant)
bid by Chris B. (estimator)
Gabriel and his crew did the roof. They were fantastic. They were efficient, polite, hard-working and appear to have done a very good job. The only advice I would give to a customer of Gabriel is to be sure to specifically ask him to protect and cover things with plastic and plywood BEFORE starting demolition (tearing off the roof). I think this is an issue with most roofers, though. And I imagine there is even more pressure to work fast since Bruce's prides itself on the one-day roof (our project took much longer) Overall, I would highly recommend working with Gabriel.
Mike was supposed to do the carpentry. He was really disorganized. He was not here as many hours as he claimed. He never finished the job. He had a lot of trouble with very basic issues, like measuring. Gabriel and the other roofers finished as much of Mike's job as they could, but some was just left undone. He did a good job with the parts he did, but doing 1/3 of a job is simply not acceptable.
To clarify: We paid by the job for the roofing and by the hour for the carpentry. All of these guys are employees of Bruce's roofing.
Chris bid the project. He was really nice when he bid and I liked the guy. When problems arose (e.g. carpentry left unfinished), he got angry and implied that we were being extremely difficult clients by expecting them to finish the job. We have a pile of unused wood on our front porch and pieces of the trim and other carpentry aspects are just undone. I am a little unclear on why Chris and Mike think this is our fault. Was Mike just supposed to do the carpentry that interested him and we, the clients, were supposed to finish it for him?
Chris appears to have an anger management problem. We have always been very calm and polite with him. He is beligerent and rude back.
Last week, he came on Wednesday and left a bill at our house for us. On Friday, he threatened to put a lien on our house. (Normally, you put a lien on somebody's house when they never pay the bill). Why on earth would you put a lien on somebody's house when you just gave them the bill? We never even hinted at not wanting to pay the bill. All I can think of is that he considered this a pre-emptive strike, assuming that we might not want to pay a bill for a job left undone. Whatever the reasons, it was extraordinarily rude and aggressive.
I really, really don't want to get in a legal battle with these guys over almost nothing. I have no idea why the estimator has the desire to escalate such a small problem into a legal battle, but I will continue to try and diffuse the situation.
So, I cannot recommend Bruce's Roofing. The roofers were great, but the carpentry problems and the extreme rude and agressive behaviour of the estimator negated the good work of the guys who actually did the work. I have spent far too much time on this.
If you have a simple situation where you just need a roof (e.g. a new house), then they would probably be great. If you have an older home and will need work done with the wood as well, call somebody else.
I was really impressed with Alan Lynch, who bid our roof from A Better Roofing Company. Their phone number is 206.935.1575. Since we did not hire them, we will never know how good of a job they would have done, but I would recommend calling them. I wish we had hired A Better instead of Bruce's.
And, if you are looking at roofers, I can tell you that the one company people continually warned me to avoid is Jorve roofing.
One friend recommended North Creek Roofing. We got a bid from them and I no longer remember why we chose not to pursue it. They were nice, though, and I imagine they would do a good job.
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