Nancy Peters

We had a good experience with Oak Hill. Our project was a small, two-story addition, but then a redesign of the space in a significant portion of the house. We also modernized the HVAC system. When we began to interview contractors, we had a good first impression of Nick and Thomas. They listened to our needs and provided a design that met those needs and adhered to our budget. The design process worked well, with us reviewing different iterations of the plan until we agreed on the best use of the space for our family.

We started the project during the pandemic, which made us quite nervous with two small children at home all of the time. Oak Hill went out of their way to ensure that we had a safe environment for our family, with the construction zone separate from our living zone. This most certainly added to the complexity and cost for Oak Hill but they did not increase the cost of the project.

When issues arose (e.g., a light switch ended up being located in an inconvenient spot, our dumpster had to be removed due to neighborhood street paving), Oak Hill made adjustments as needed. No changes that would result in extra costs were made unless we agreed. Any time we had a major issue – such as the AC no longer functioning in the middle of summer – Nick and Thomas always worked to resolve the problem quickly.

Given the scope of the project there were quite a few subcontractors involved for things like HVAC, plumbing, etc. We did feel like some of the subcontractors didn’t always provide the most timely or consistently high quality services. For instance, the HVAC subcontractor took forever to prepare their bid and order materials, which slowed down the project significantly. The tile installer had to come back a number of times because the work was never quite finished. While we are pleased with the results in our new bathrooms and elsewhere in the house, the process to get there was at times a struggle.

I think our additional complaint, aside from the subs, is that the ebb and flow of the project was very hard to understand. Our requests for a planned schedule of work (even high level) didn’t always receive a timely reply. We were sometimes frustrated that certain components of the project seemed to require multiple follow ups in order to reach a resolution.