Complaint Review: Heartwood Remodeling - Warwick Rhode Island

Heartwood Remodeling should change it's name to Heartless Remodeling. My wife and I deeply regret that we hired Warwick/Cranston Rhode Island's Heartwood Remodeling, it was by far the worst decision we ever made. It was an extremely long and painful experience to say the very least. Anything that possibly could have gone wrong did go wrong. We were horrified at the lack of professionalism and workmanship shown by Heartwood Remodeling. We hired Heartwood Remodeling to do a $40,000 kitchen and 1/2 bath remodel and we naturally expected that for the $21,000 we paid Heartwood Remodeling that there would be an experienced work crew working on a regular basis. Unfortunately during our project the company Heartwood Remodeling really consisted of only Steve Pelosi and there was virtually no man power to speak of. On the rare occasion that there was somebody working with Steve they tended have little to no experience and were usually elderly floor sweepers or there to hand him things. It was clear very early on that our project was way over the head of Steve Pelosi of Heartwood Remodeling. During our project Steve did not work on most Tuesdays and the days he did work he would typically leave before 2:30. We finally filed a claim with the RI Contractors Board and a complaint with the Better Business Bureau on the 127th day of our still uncompleted project, 182 days from when we signed the contract because Heartwood Remodeling did not start for nearly two months from when we paid the first payment. Steve then took all his tools and walked off our uncompleted job (and in a grinch like move he even took our light bulbs from our fixtures). For 114 days we had to wash our dishes in our bathtub while without a kitchen sink. For months we felt like hostages in our own home while every room was packed with boxes stacked to our ceilings. After the toilet's plumbing was installed it took months to finally get the toilet installed, during which time a pungent sewage stench would fill our home when the upstairs toilet or shower was used. After 90 days Steve admittedly took down his advertising sign in front of our house because he admitted he was embarrassed about how the job was not progressing. Steve Pelosi frequently made tasks much harder for himself by not doing them the right way the first time. Things constantly were installed crooked and not level. When our kitchen cabinets were initially installed our kitchen literally look like a carnival funhouse. There was more than a 3/4" slant from one side of the base cabinets to the other side and the front of the cabinets were slanted much higher than the rear of the cabinets. We had to beg Steve to finally get him to install them level (unfortunately scratching our brand new wood floors in the process). Our granite company had to come back a second time because the cabinets were not installed level the first time they came to do the countertop template. At one point Steve started taking home his levels everyday so we would not check his work but a level was not needed to see how far off things were. Instead of installing some sort of trim between the backsplash and microwave, our backsplash was grouted right up into our over-the-range microwave and for some reason he used sanded grout instead of non-sanded grout on the backsplash tile. We constantly had to ask for things to be redone because they were not done well the first time. Steve made sure he only worked when we were not home and email was our only form of communication. After we sent an email about issues we had, we received a reply from Steve stating that if we didn't like his work he would start charging us extra by adding fixes as "change orders". In the same email he had the nerve to threaten to put a Lien on our home, even though we did not owe him any more money, and walk off the job. We found it very frustrating that Steve always put smaller finishing projects as a priority over the major jobs that really needed to be done. Tasks such as installing a ceiling fan, light fixtures, and baseboards were always worked on first even though the plumbing, toilet, dishwasher, and both sinks really needed to be installed since we had already gone without them for 100+ days. We asked for our 12" bathroom tiles we purchased to be installed staggered but he installed them straight. Because the project was taking such a long time he probably forgot but he should have at least asked us how we wanted them installed if he did not know. We were shocked when Steve installed our bathroom sink, toilet, and radiator before he grouted the floor tiles, in the process the tiles ended up crooked, unlevel, and were sticking up so bad it was a tripping hazard. Steve Pelosi had an extremely unprofessional attitude. Too often the days were filled with drama and when we were home you could cut the tension in our home with a knife. One day I was watching as Steve and a worker were moving our refrigerator and Steve looked at me and twice rudely barked "we don't need any supervisors . . . we can use helpers". I was the customer and not a worker and I should not have been spoken to like that, especially in my own home. Also while moving our refrigerator Steve swore loudly twice in front of my young children which was very upsetting to us. The worker who was helping actually called Steve into the other room and had a talk with him because Steve was so out of line. Steve decided it was not necessary to drywall the ceiling above the kitchen wall cabinets because the ceiling would not be seen there, we expressed our concerns of drafts because the cabinets were inches from being flush with the open ceiling and his reply was "what do you care, your whole house is drafty". From day one Steve never once answered his cell phone or returned a call adding to the abundant lack of communication throughout the project. Way too often Steve took his own creative liberties to do various things and he did not ask for our input nearly often enough. The RI Senior State Building Code Official said Steve Pelosi illegally wrote our contract. Virtually all the money was paid within ten days of work and after that Steve had absolutely no motivation to finish the job and stopped showing up anywhere near a regular basis after that. He had just finished gutting the rooms in ten days and very little of the job was completed. Our contract did not have an expected finish date and we wish we knew better because we learned later on contractors should provide an expected completion date in the contract. About 50 days into our project even though so much more work needed to be done, our house was put on the back burner as Steve Pelosi started another kitchen project and proceeded to show up to ours on an extremely limited basis. Heartwood Remodeling does not have sufficient manpower for one kitchen project much less two projects at the same time. During the project Steve attempted to collect $3600 extra for things he took it upon himself to do and for things we never agreed to or signed papers for. The original plan for our kitchen ceiling was to have the original beams exposed with drywall installed in between but our beams were not quite what Steve thought they were going to be after the ceiling was gutted. We came home from work to find Steve had taken it upon himself to create a faux ceiling beam look by installing new beams around our ceiling without telling us first, showing us pictures, showing us samples, or giving us any options. Unfortunately we grew to hate the new beams as they caused numerous issues later on. Even though our ceiling was completely gutted out to begin with, the beams and whole ceiling was installed crooked two inches higher on one side of the room than the other side and the drywall ceiling in between the beams was installed at all different heights. The recessed lighting was installed off centered between the 8" tall beams so that one side of the recessed lights is very close against the beams and the other side is much farther away from the next beam, not only does it look wrong being off centered between the beams, when the lights are on the beams block half the recessed lighting on one side which causes shadows throughout our kitchen. Steve was not able to put one of our cabinet doors on because he put the top molding on the wall cabinet on crooked so the cabinet door would not fit, he put the molding up crooked because the ceiling beams were put up crooked. It hurt to have to constantly have to speak of our contractor woes to our friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers who would inquire on a daily basis about the lack of work being done on our home and all the nightmare issues we were going through. It was such a helpless feeling to have given all our money to Steve Pelosi only to have him repeatedly not show up, work so painfully slow, and do such a sub par job. Nobody deserves to go through the mental anguish that Steve Pelosi of Heartwood Remodeling caused our family.