Braddock Journey

Thursday, September 04, 2008

This is an evolving list of contractors to hire and to avoid at all costs ... Every time someone new is added it will come back to the top of the list of stories.

The Good: Home Repair
Dun-Rite Windows & Doors
412.781.8200
getitdun-rite.com
We are very happy with the quality of windows and the services from Dun-Rite. They repaired broken windows, installed new windows and screens, and even put in a glass brick window for our shower.

Nicholas Electric Co., Inc.
412.271.8001
Nick Glova, the president of Nicholas Electric and mayor of Rankin, has been extremely helpful and on the ball throughout the process. We have grand ideas for a media room, wanted a surge protector at the service entrance, and changed our minds numerous times about whether we needed temporary outlets, all in addition to needing a house completely rewired. He’s met our challenges with excellent input and prices. My parents were surprised that there is a waiting list for electrical in Braddock, but it’s because we are all in line to work with Nick. Even through delays because one of his employees had a family death, we have been willing to wait because of the superb service we have received so far.

Joe Bonifate Masonry
Joe is picky about who he will work with. He gave Joel a thorough interview before he would take him on as a client. It seems some people will hire him, fail to pay him, and then recommend him to others. (Hey, I know this great free mason… ) We were lucky enough to have Joel as our resource in finding Joe, and we received speedy and flexible service. He’s also a stickler for a perfect job, so when he examined the final product he sent back one of his workers to fix something before he would let me pay him.

Brian Whitney, general contractor
412.823.3880
Roofing was a sore point for us. Our roof is 12x12, which means scary in lay terms and expensive in pricing. (12x12 is the roof rise ratio ... it’s trig: the tangent of the roof-pitch angle, and 12/12 is steep.) Brian took a long time getting us an estimate, but once it was in they started working on our roof immediately thanks to Mayor John. It was finished within a week, they were able to add on ridge vents at the last minute when I realized I had discussed this with every other roofer but him, and they came back to repair a hole cut in the roof for the plumbing a week after they had finished. We are very happy with the service, the price, and the speed.

The Good: Beginning Steps
ABF U-Pack
http://www.upack.com
When we moved from the west coast to Pittsburgh we were a little worried about getting our belongings across. It was March, there were still winter storms in Utah and Colorado, and we didn’t want to drive it ourselves. On the other hand, we have heard many horror stories about moving companies. Based on advice from Alaska Marine Lines, we were finally routed to ABF U-Pack. Our boxes were already packed, so we rented a truck to bring them to the ABF lot to load into a freight. Normally you can get the truck dropped off at your place to load over three days, but our things had been in storage and we couldn’t park a truck there. Not only was the final price lower than the estimate, everything arrived on time and in good shape.

Tim O’Leary
(412) 491-5488
www.homeinspectionbyoleary.com
This review came in from someone moving into Braddock, and I wanted to share the good news: He was great.  He met us late on a friday night.  Said since we were going to be doing so much work on the house he didn’t charge us for the regular home inspection even though that is what I asked him to do.  Saved us a couple hundred dollars, and had the report by the next afternoon!

The Closing Specialists
www.tcsclosing.com/tcs/
Diane Cipa at The Closing Specialists doesn’t live in the Braddock area now, but her family is from here. She is one of the few locals who had a positive response to what we are doing here (most people ask why, she was excited). The Closing Specialists processed two title searches for us, and we feel confident in recommending them to everyone else in town as reliable, efficient, and helpful.

The Bad
Panfil Plumbing
The job is complete, which we are thankful for. Other than that our experience was very poor with Panfil Plumbing, and we cannot recommend them. Unfortunately, we will be looking for another plumber to finish off small details that we missed in the initial estimate. The most troubling parts included asking us for the final payment up front to cover personal problems and stating that without this he would not even be able to start in the foreseeable future, yelling at both me and my husband (this is how I viewed it, it could have been simply a raised voice in anger...is there a difference?) on numerous occasions, taking over a month instead of the estimated week, and changing the entire job on the first day by adding an unexpected house trap that increased the total cost by 50%.

Northstar
We did not actually work with Northstar. They showed up to look at our roof and came back with an outrageous estimate. The kicker was that the salesman who walked us around the house to tell us what they would do for our roof only talked about shingle and gutter colors rather than the needed work. He also told us that his $25,000 estimate was lower than any other we would get—the next highest was $17,000. They were under the impression we were receiving federal funds to replace the roof, I’m not sure what that means much less where they got that idea.