Nearby Trampoline Assembly in San Jose

Working with Everlast was a negative experience and I can't recommend them. My project was complex, involving full remodel of kitchen/bathroom/living room/laundry room, building a ground floor addition, removing a main structural wall, and replacing the back deck. We're home reno veterans so I understand about unexpected surprises and reasonable industry-standard quality. I believe that Everlast did try their best and they are nice guys overall, but this project was beyond their ability to handle and they fell far below the level of service and quality they promised to get the contract. From the start, the project manager was inexperienced and couldn't get things organized or prioritized, the crew was not supervised properly and adequate instructions were hardly ever communicated to them, work was rarely done right and usually had to corrected multiple times, and deadlines were overpromised and missed everywhere. There were major mistakes - shortcuts on plumbing connections that caused our upstairs sewage to clog, structural beams welded too narrow to install the patio sliding doors, the floor beams they built are not level so we now just live with a few bouncy "trampoline" spots on the ground floor, and shortcuts on the back deck so that our ramp and dock actually ripped away from the back deck because of insufficient support. The original 3 month estimate dragged out to 13+ months which was a big problem given we were living upstairs in the house and found out I was pregnant right after we started the project. After trying to make it work for the first few months, I asked for the project manager to be replaced with someone more experienced, which Everlast did not do, so I ended up having to take over managing most of the project (while still working a full time job). We also had to pitch in on construction work ourselves so we could get basic functions back and the crew out of the house before the baby arrived. I started having to bring other contractors in to complete separate portions of work like the new staircase or replacing the back fence, given Everlast was so behind schedule and because their change order quotes would sometimes be 4x higher than other contractor's quotes. I tried to get adjustments reconciled as we reduced Everlast's scope of work with the baby's due date getting closer and closer, but the owner Ariel wanted to be paid every installment payment in full. He said he wanted to leave all adjustments to the end, or sometimes he'd say he'd stop work if we didn't pay the instalment in full - so we had very little choice of course. Trying to get the house finished after the baby was born was frustrating too, and after many broken deadlines we finally ended up terminating the contract. I hired other contractors to finish the project and correct Everlast's mistakes. But the drama didn't end there - although I paid Everlast for the work they did complete, Ariel still wanted to be paid the full contract price, didn't want to acknowledge we had to reconcile a long list of adjustments that had built up, and threatened to file a lien and foreclose my house. The deadline to validly file a lien has now expired for Everlast. They did mail us a lien document (that was dated after the deadline), but so far it doesn't look like the lien was actually filed with the county. If Everlast ends up filing later knowing it's an invalid lien, that's really bad and I'd be entitled to ask the court to remove it and force Everlast to pay my costs. I wanted to share a true account of my experiences with Everlast to let other homeowners decide if this is the kind of home renovation experience they want for their project too.