We hired Ralph of Calgary Interior Systems to frame, drywall and texture the ceilings of our basement development. He contracts out each portion of the job. The fellow he brought in to do the framing, worked so quickly that the job was done very shoddy. We have walls that are not straight, as he did not check the existing studs on outside walls to be sure they were good. When he framed the ceiling bulkheads, he had to be brought back as they were not level. Then we still had to fix them ourselves as they were still wrong. The worst was that the wall the framer built in the bathroom was completely out, by nearly 2 inches, which became evident when the tile setter for the shower came to tile the wall. Ralph came back himself to patch this wall, which is now has ripples of uneven drywall compound on it. We asked Ralph to cover the extra costs we incurred to repaint this wall, and he has not responded to any of our correspondence. The drywall job itself has some issues, we have some bad joints and some corners that are not well done. The ceiling texture work was a fiasco as well. Ralph contracted Big Al's texturing to do the knockdown finish. They had to make 3 trips out as we kept finding areas where they had not properly sprayed the drywall before applying the knoockdown. Our entire ceiling has now been painted over the texturing in order to fix the problem. This takes away from the overall effect of the texturing. See my review on Big Al's for more info on that if you like. Overall, I would never recommend Ralph. Although he does a great sales job on his services, he never lived up to his promises. This was our first experience with this type of development. I now know I should have held back 10% of the payment until the rest of the trades were finished, as this is when the problems came to light. This is common practice we now know, but Ralph was always wanting payment even before we were able to take a good look at the work. Overall not a great experience! The rest of the trades we had in did a great job and we are very happy with them. Unfortunately, this was the biggest and most visible part of the development.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $11,000.00
- Company Response
Hello Jennifer, we are so sorry we were unable to satisfy your needs. Our crews are also saddened that their many years of experience and my 40 years was not enough to bring the level of finish to your level of expectation. We never ask for money up front or even part way thru the construction process. We only ask for payment on completion which is what occurred in your case. Again we apologize for not having the ability to satisfy your expectations.
