Our home was water damaged by a break in a fire sprinkler pipe. This led to us selecting Kowalski Construction Inc to do the mitigation, contents moving and storage, and the restoration of our home. Although my wife and I interacted with were polite staff and listened to our concerns, we experienced a terrible experience with Kowalski Construction Inc. In particular, we wish to commend Greg, Ron, Alfred, and Robert who were diligent and picked up the pieces after the fact.
The work done demonstrated incompetence, lack of attention to detail, and poor oversight and management of the project. Communications and hand-off between mitigation team, restoration team, packing team, and the billing group was totally lacking contributing to the mess that our home restoration project became. It is because of this that we feel Kowalski Construction service was ultimately substandard. My wife had to function as the de facto project manager in all aspects of the job because Jeramy was regularly absent from the site or nonresponsive.
I list a series of examples of the shoddy workmanship, lack of oversight and incomprehensible billing process.
1. Initial painting of the house was performed by inexperienced painters who had to be instructed by my wife about a simple as taking off light switch plates and not paint over screws that would make it extremely difficult to remove in the future if necessary.
2. Baseboards were installed in an erratic manner so they were not aligned and at different heights from the floor throughout the house. This required them being removed and reinstalled.
3. Marble floor tiles, broken in the process of the dishwasher installation, were replaced by untrained individuals. This necessitated my wife finding a qualified floor tile expert for the third attempt.
4. A piece of granite counter was removed from one cabinet in the kitchen during the tear out and placed with the broken granite from the laundry room and severely damaged spare bathroom into the garage. This granite counter was intact and we were assured that because no granite in the kitchen was broken during tear out so we would be able to preserve the kitchen granite in toto. About 2 weeks before we moved back into our home i.e. ~4 months later, when my wife asked where this piece was, it discovered that the perfectly good piece of granite was removed to be discarded by Kowalski staff along with the damaged granite when my wife asked where this piece was. This resulted in purchasing a new set of slabs for the subsequent tear out and replacement of all the kitchen granite 1 month after we moved back into our home.
5. When the tear out was underway we went with Greg to Lowe's on June 28, 2018 to select hardware replacement including 2 vent fans for the bathroom and laundry room. These vent fans that were sitting at Kowalski Construction facilities were not installed before the new dry wall was put into the bathroom and laundry room. It necessitated cutting into the dry wall and inserting the vents from the ceiling above after the fact about 5 months after the vent purchase.
6. When putting in the vents Ron discovered that insulation was not put back into the space between the ceiling and roof as was required and billed for. This necessitated the last minute rental of a blower and blowing insulation in above the laundry room and bathroom when the cleaning crew had already started to clean the house for the pack back.
7. During the pack back it was discovered that the feet to our living room couch had gone missing. No one at Kowalski could find them in the storage facility.
8. A handmade occasional table that was stored by Kowalski had one leg broken off in the storage/moving process. Instead of getting it fixed, someone at Kowalski put some screws into the leg and table in an unsuccessful attempt to secure it. Then a Kowalski mover had the nerve to tell us to be careful with the table because a leg was loose.
9. Jeramy, who was responsible for overseeing this job, did not come to our house from early December 2018 until the completion of the job. How he could oversee anything is beyond my understanding.
10. The billing process Kowalski uses is opaque to the customer. An invoice for over $39,000 was issued to me for a supplemental contract. What this supplemental contract was supplemental to, was not clear. What charges were included in this supplemental contract were totally lacking. The billing staff was unable to tell me what this was for when I called.
These points are described because I considered them major and resulted in redoes, last minute fixes that resulted in carryovers beyond when we moved back, and demonstrated lack of consideration for customers. I cannot recommend Kowalski Construction for any restoration project, and recommend that people avoid dealings with Kowalski Construction on any residential projects.
