Advanced Builders & Remodeling

I was referred to Charlie (the owner of the business) by a co worker who just had an immaculate 2 tier deck built by him. After the recent snow storms my front awning decided to separate and fall off the front of my house that i just bought 4 months ago. I was new to the area and needed help fast since the awning was 30 feet wide (the width of the house) and it was about 3 feet long. The awning fell Wednesday morning around 7 a.m. crashing down onto my front steps. Also pieces of plywood and siding where hanging and hitting my bay window. I called Charlie and he was able to come out within the hour. He advised me to call my insurance and take a lot of pictures. He ended up waterproofing my house so that i wouldn’t get any leaks from the damage and he removed the hanging pieces of siding and plywood. After getting a few more estimates and clearing everything with my insurance i decided to go with advanced builders for the quality of work that i have seen from them. My decision was the correct one charlie completed the work in a timely matter. His craftsmanship was was high quality. He used lag bolts for the new awning rather than screws and nails. He used OSB board to create the gusset plates rather than using the new cheap aluminium ones you buy at your local hardware store. The stairs are better quality then the original ones. The house now looks better than it did before the awning fell. I was truly pleased with charlie’s work and communication and would refer him to everybody.

We were referred to Advanced by some friends who had used them before and been happy with the results. Charlie (the owner of Advanced) came out and walked through the job with us discussing in detail the work we wanted to have completed. He was enthusiastic, and very friendly. He then followed up with an e-​mail quote for the job. I was concerned that his prices were higher than the other bids we received, but Charlie was adamant that his work was higher quality and we were paying for his years of experience. We agreed and he began work. We were very clear that the work was to be done by our move in date and Charlie assured us that he had «more than enough time». Once work began things started to deteriorate. Charlie became increasingly hard to get ahold of, to the point that I had to threaten to pull him off the job just to receive a call back. We began to notice issues with the work, but could not get Charlie to come out in person to discuss the problems. They installed windows for us, one of which was completely the wrong style and did not match anything else in the house. They removed the wall, but did not measure properly and built a header that would not allow our front door to open. Lastly, they were tasked with demolishing one room but instead just dry walled over the existing dry wall without removing the trim! The only time I heard from Charlie was when he was calling to tell me that the cost was going up, eventually we paid nearly 30% over his original quote for LESS work. Charlie insists that this is really normal and told me that it was my fault for not knowing that the quoted price would increase by at least that much. Then, when our move in date came of course they were not done with the work. We had to hire other contractors to finish the work that Charlie had promised to finish, and had been paid for.
Eventually, after months of pressuring Charlie did come out and correct some of the issue but he still refuses to return the funds paid for the work they did not finish. After correcting the work done incorrectly Charlie said that it was more than fair for him to keep the overpayment because he did more work, when in truth it was just correcting the previous mistakes.
Charlie and Advanced builders are they type of contractors that give the trade a bad name. Avoid at all costs!