Peter from The Beach

Our rec room has a gas fireplace installed ten years previously by the previous owners. The thermostatic remote had stopped working so we called in Classic Fireplace for a general cleaning and inspection and to diagnose the remote. All went well with the cleaning and inspection, but not surprisingly the technician declared the pairing between the remote and the fireplace had died and recommended getting a new one installed. The price would have been $229 plus a service call, putting it at $400 or so. Since that seemed like a lot, and because we don't use the fireplace frequently, I've been procrastinating on a replacement. This fall however, while researching replacements, I happened to find a Youtube video that indicated that occasionally pairings were lost and that there was a simple way (via a secret recessed button) to reset the pairing on my kind of remote. It only took me some new batteries and a few minutes to get my remote working again. Now, I don't think the technician was deliberately trying to upsell me on a new remote, and if the price hadn't been so high I would gladly have bought a replacement. But on the other hand, this pairing reset seems to be a pretty simple thing (although not obvious to a layman who hadn't read the manual), and I would have been saved a lot of trouble if he had just gone ahead and done the reset.

We had Russ replace our downspouts and install leaf guards in Fall 2014. As a whole, the work was done on time and without problem, other than one downspout junction that I thought might be leaking. Unfortunately we were going through a dry spell and Russ asked to be paid, which I did, assuming that he would correct any problems that turned up when it rained. Unfortunately the downspout did leak, and I called him several times last fall, this spring and summer with no results. Now I'm going to have to pay somebody else to fix his faulty installation. Weird, because all the other reviews here are pretty positive. Update: Russ has attempted to solve the problem. One leak was fixed, but that uncovered a second leak that he never fixed. Eventually I got somebody else to fix it.

We had bought a house whose finished basement had a stucco ceiling. Adam and his crew removed the stucco and did miscellaneous repairs. Adam was friendly and efficient, and did the project on time and at the quoted price. Although I wouldn't hesitate to hire Adam again, or recommend him to others, here are a couple of caveats: First, this work is very messy and can spread dust through the house and onto articles left in the work zone. Although Adam covered the floors and entrances, there was still quite a bit of cleanup we had to do afterwards. Second, although Adam fixed a number of imperfections, there was still a bit of waviness in one ceiling area. Whether this could have been fixed with an extra skim coat or was beyond the scope of work is moot, because I didn't really notice this until much later, after we had primed and painted. But all in all, these caveats are minor compared to having a stucco-free house.