3 stars for the basement we ended up with, 1 star for the horrible experience.
All this company does is file the permits then hand it off to one of their subcontractor teams (who have 2 or 3 projects going at once) and you will work entirely with that team; you will only hear from the company to ask for the next check. The problem is they do not vet the teams they hire, nor the work that they perform, and they will not help you when things go bad.
Our first team was friendly and meant well, but had no attention to detail and made many mistakes they weren’t able to fix. The windows were framed so badly some couldn’t fully open. Most door frames were out of plumb and they planed the sides of the doors to fit. Many bulging / misshapen walls and soffits. The bathroom tile was awful. There were many more mistakes that are hard to capture in one picture. It was a nightmare checking for mistakes, asking for fixes, checking again, asking again, etc, for weeks on end. Our foreman did not speak English which made things harder.
They were also unprofessional. Their notice of when they would come often changed without telling us. No dust control. Many design decisions without asking us. The inspector approved on condition of some extra work which they tried to skip. They broke our countertop for the wet bar.
When we began raising alarms to the company, they were slow to respond and basically just asked the team to fix it, then never followed up. No employee of Affordable Basements ever once reached out to discuss the situation, how best to resolve it, or ask how things were progressing, nor ever came to our home after the project started, despite raising serious quality concerns multiple times. Their total lack of oversight and concern left us to manage everything ourselves which was stressful and time-consuming.
After three failed fixes on the window framing and tile, and still doing unacceptable new work, we demanded a new team, and the company did allow this. But they never acknowledged that anything bad had happened, let alone apologized, instead telling us how they’ve “had great basements come out of [the first team] with zero complaints”, implying that we were the crazy ones. The new team was shocked at how badly the first team had done and took another 7 work weeks to redo the entire bathroom, replace 3 misframed doors, among other work, and they did a decent job.
After 19 work weeks on our “8 week project”, we ended up with a decent basement, though many mistakes remain. The company never showed any empathy for our terrible experience caused by their negligence, let alone any discounts for it (beyond the property damages).
A basement remodel is a huge investment of time and money and it’s just not worth rolling the dice like this. Please learn from us and the similar stories around and find a more reputable and caring company.
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