Reinhard Demant Construction Inc.

I’ve gone back and forth on giving Reinhard 3 or 4 stars, and I will explain and provide photos of my reasoning as well. Overall, I do not regret hiring Reinhard and basically wound up with exactly what I requested out of the remodel process. He was always willing to adjust plans as things went on and there were about 4 or 5 changes that I made while in the process that he accommodated quickly and did not charge excessively for. The work was done in a relatively timely manner, and he was flexible with payment dates as I needed.
My project started over a year ago when my guest bathroom backed up and overflowed due to a root ball in my septic system. The bathroom and adjacent bedroom with carpet basically had to be gutted due to the drywall soaking up water. The carpet in the bedroom had to be pulled. The bathroom itself was straight out of the 1950’s and an eyesore to begin with, so I decided it was a better option to remodel it, and make it modern. It started as a side project, and I had done some of the dry walling and purchased new flooring but not installed it for the bedroom prior to my realization that I did not have the time or energy to finish out the project within a reasonable time frame. Enter the contractor.
Finding a decent reliable contractor was the next step of the battle. Why is Tucson so shitty in this way? After about 15 different companies coming out to my home to provide an estimate, only 4 were actually willing to do the job. I’m not foreign to the process or costs of work so I knew roughly what the cost would be. So 1 company bid $ 3000, which was ridiculous. There was more material costs than that. Another, bid $ 15k. Too high. Reinhard bid about $ 12k. A little bit higher than we would have liked as a starting price, but not far off. Reinhard wins the day.
As one should always do, I requested before work began to see blueprints and licenses, proof of bond, etc. Reinhard seemed hesitant to provide a blueprint, but I insisted and he did provide one. Proof of licensing and bond, he presented a card from his wallet giving his license number and I was able to look him up online and see that he is legit. Fine. Work begins and about a month later ends, and I am about 95% happy with what we got.
Some of my requests, like not using a bullnose tile on the shower frame, or that we replace the ceiling fan that he broke rather than repair it, were met with kind albeit firm resistance. I was insistent however, and as a result the end product looks better than what he would have provided otherwise. On multiple occasions, I had to step in and say, «This isn’t right» or «Do this over again», which was then promptly fixed. I’m not so sure some other client who doesn’t know what they’re looking at and/​or isn’t extremely involved in the design process would get the final product I did.
Not everything came out perfect even in the end, and for this I refer you to the photos. End price after allotments was $ 15k. The existing photos are clearly stock photos and I doubt highly that they are of actual work he performed.
If this were the end of the story, I would have given 4 stars, but its not. I knock off a star because of 4 things: 1) Reinhard and his partner Gary are devout Christians and they never forced their beliefs on me; however, there was a situation with Gary proselytizing to one of the tile guys in my back yard, that bothered the tile guy and me. That is unprofessional. 2) I instructed them to keep my back gate closed so the dogs could not get out. I can understand that being an error made once. Not 3 times. I’m lucky I was home at these times, and I was able to retrieve them quickly, but carelessness with a clients loved ones does not get you another star. 3) My old toilet is still sitting in my back yard. I was told Gary wanted to make a planter out of it, so it was set aside not thrown away while the dumpster was here, but apparently he wasnt so fond of it and despite me asking Reinhard to pick it up, its still sitting there. 4) We have another bathroom to remodel and we wanted to put saltillo throughout the house. The other bath is not in bad shape and requires not a lot other than tiling and a new vanity. I went and costed the materials on the tile at $ 3k. Vanity about $ 1k, and trim maybe another thousand. $ 5k total. Reinhard quoted me at over $ 15k to do the rest, which seemed unreasonable to me and so we decided to cut ties and hire someone else who is doing all the tile work for $ 5k. The rest I can do myself. I had no hard feelings, but when Reinhard came to do some cleanup, he felt the need to confront me and insist that it is a fair bid and that Gary costs $ 20/​hr and you can’t get good people like that anymore and… I don’t care. Unprofessional again. I don’t have to defend my reasoning for not hiring you, and most importantly, the bid was too high. Nothing personal. Just doing business.
All in all, I got basically what I wanted, but it is in their tendency to cut corners a bit.