Ciaran Mackey

Zero stars if possible…
I called Ciaran 6 days ago and left details for a job I wanted done, obviously including all contact details…
Pretty shoddy if you can’t be bothered to return calls…

This review is long overdue Ciaran as you well know.
Ciaran worked with me in the past, as an apprentice carpenter. I found him during this time to be highly attentive and motivated young man that strived on a daily basis to aspire to excellence in his craft, exceeding my expectation time and time again. These traits are very rarely found in the trades. Ciaran became a great carpenter moving on to bigger and better things.
I can only wish him the best and highly recommend him to anybody that is in need of assistance regardless of the task.

Unilocal took my previous post down… Ciaran did a great job for us… here is my review reposted:
Ciaran did a great job installing a new exterior door in an entry that had previously had so many renovations that it required a great deal of rebuilding. Ciaran figured out how to rebuild the framework to prevent us from having to damage exterior stucco and increasing the work and costs. He was reliable and collaborative on the project and we were very happy with the work. (We had a home depot pro come to evaluate/​estimate the same project and they wanted 2x the price and were going to make it a much larger project). Ciaran did exactly what we wanted!

Unreliable! Made an appt last weekend for yesterday @ 11am. Called the day before to confirm appt & asked for a call back. No call back. Went to my dad’s anyway hoping he would show up. Nothing, zip, zero, nada! I called him when I got home (didn’t have his # w/​me) and I had to remind him what the appt was for! Then, he lied and said he called me the previous evening but didn’t leave a message. Bullshit! I had no missed call on my cell phone menu. Then he said he «forgot.» Well I told him he wasn’t getting my business & I would be writing my 1^st Unilocal review ever and would be giving him a bad review. I really needed him to give us a quote for a 2^nd bannister for my dad who keeps falling. The job was urgent and he totally let us down BIG TIME. His new name is MR. UNREALIABLE! Find someone else. Please.

Ciaran has recently finished some maintenance work on a rental house in San Francisco for me. This also included him building a replica of a window planter box that was initially installed in 1941 and had dry rotted over the years. The craftmanship was truely first class. I recommend Ciaran for those special projects you may have and look forward to using him on my various projects in the future.

Ciaran has been doing handyman and carpentry work for me for over two years at my condo in San Francisco and a cabin in Lake Tahoe.
This guy is a hidden gem. His work is fantastic and he can do just about any handyman job you can think of. He’s a carpenter by trade but has been working so long in construction that he knows how to do tons of other things, or else can bring in other guys with specific skills. He also knows where to source materials and can negotiate good prices. And he’s a nice guy to have around your house, super friendly, and takes so much pride in his work.
He works fast and sticks to his quotes. If something takes less time, he charges you less. You know how sometimes you have work done in your house and its not quite up to what you expected, or there are mistakes? and its a total pain in the a$#* to get the handyman to acknowledge the mistake, come back and fix it? Well, Ciaran notices them before you do, he shows you, he explains what went wrong and he fixes it. If its his mistake he doesn’t charge the extra time. If its a mistake he warned you could happen, then he’ll talk with you about the possible solutions and ask you what you want to do.
He cleans up everything perfectly once the job is done. Removes all the trash and vacuums and cleans floors etc, unlike some handymen who leave half the cleaning up to you.
He recently painted two rooms in my place, took out a built in bookcase and drawers without damaging either the walls or the built in (so i can sell the built-​in on craiglist), and stained the floor under the built in to match the rest of the room, so i didn’t have to have the whole floor redone.
I’m a single woman with no clue about any of this stuff and he’s been teaching me to do small jobs on my own. He fixed my kitchen faucet and taught me how to do it myself if the same problem occurs. He tightened some loose faucets in the bathroom sink. He taught me how to remove the window treatments in my house without damaging the frames.
He’s done tons of different things for me over the years:
— Several painting jobs at different times
— Reformed and concreted the runway into our garage for the HOA. Its a steep driveway without much space in the clearance for our SUV. When we told him that it was a bit tight and the rear of the car sometimes bumps against the concrete he came back two saturdays and sat there on his own time chiseling away at the concrete til it was right. and that cannot have been much fun.
— i had tenants in my condo for a year and they did quite a bit of damage to one of the archways and to the two rooms that are carpeted. I had Ciaran repaint some of the rooms, steam clean the carpets and sheet-​rock the archway and replace the trim. He did it so fast and it was super reasonable.
At the cabin he laid wood flooring and did the sheet-​rocking and painting. He put in insulation under the house in a tiny crawl space and secured it from animal invasion (a problem in the woods).
He’s also really honest about what he can’t or won’t do, and he’ll tell you up front that the results you’re looking for on something might not be possible. Like, i asked him to replace an ungrounded electrical socket with a grounded one and he just said, «sarah, i think i’ll blow myself up». Another time we asked him to build stairs in our cabin and he looked at the space we had and said, «I can’t build a safe set of stairs in this space».
I really can’t say enough good about this guy. He works afternoons from about 4pm and on weekends. His skills are top notch and current because he works full time as a carpenter. He can do much bigger jobs than the ones i’ve had him do, so if you need new stairs and railings etc he can do them all to safety certified levels.
One disclaimer: I met him because he is the fiancé of my son’s nanny, so I’m inclined to like him at a personal level. But its really the quality of his work, his commitment to finishing the job properly and his ability to solve any problem that is the reason I keep asking him to do more work.