When a 3rd floor plumbing issue flooded our home while we were away for 2 days, we weren’t sure what to do. We are in a 100-year-old row house, and the water had traveled down to the basement level, essentially causing 4 floors’ worth of damage. Plaster walls had been saturated, the ceiling in one bathroom had partially caved in, and parts of the original oak flooring in our first floor were warped.
The insurance company sent an adjuster who grossly underestimated the extent of the damage and told me the original wood floors weren’t worth saving. Luckily, I decided to get a second opinion. A neighbor recommended Robert Schuck/Unique Resources specifically because of the floors. Robert truly values the craftmanship of these old homes – and he knows how to preserve them.
Because of the extent of the water damage, our contract with Robert was BIG. Over the course of 10 months, his team gutted and renovated our kitchen and 2.5 bathrooms, and installed new ceiling and flooring in our basement. They also refinished the wood floors on our main level and painted extensively.
Renovations tend to be long and stressful, but throughout it all, I never doubted the quality of the work Unique Resources was doing. For one thing, Robert knows the building code (one of his long-time employees used to work for the city in code enforcement) and will never do any work that is not up to code. In addition to that, most of his employees have been with him for decades and seem to have a tendency towards perfectionism. When it came to my wood flooring, Robert was able to match the original 2” oak planks – not just in terms of size, but also with color. (The color match came after Craig, the carpenter, tested countless different stains.) Robert ordered three different custom-sized blades so that he could match the original molding on the first-floor ceiling. On the 3rd floor, when we realized that the fixtures in our original bathroom had not been spaced according to modern codes, Robert provided a plan for resizing the bathroom (by cutting into an adjacent bedroom), which provided more space.
One additional benefit of hiring Robert, which I didn’t realize at the time: Insurance claims are very complicated and insurance companies tend to grossly underestimate the scope of work. Many contractors prefer not to deal with insurance companies, but Robert was very generous with his time in terms of meeting with the adjuster and working with us and with them to develop a scope of work that addressed all of the damage related to the flood – and made sure our 100-year-old home was up-to-date in terms of meeting Baltimore City’s current building codes.
After our project wrapped, there were a few small issues that required tweaking, but in these cases, Robert was very responsive about coming back to make sure the job had been down right and we were satisfied. Now, 15 months after the completion of the renovations, I could not be happier with the house or with Unique Resources.
