Victorian Restoration Co

Based on Homestars reviews & several good initial visits, we hired Bill of Victorian Restoration to remove paint from our brick facade and tuckpoint/repair any damage that process exposed.

He suggested breaking the work into 2 parts— the majority of the cleaning right away, then cleaning smaller additional areas & repairs after the porch was demolished.
At this point, we were satisfied with Bill’s work and had no reason not to trust him. So, we paid him IN FULL upon completion of the first phase of work (even though the secondary cleaning & the repairs were still undone).

At that time we also hired him to install 4 steel lintels to support the brick above new basement window openings, replace some damaged bricks, and rebuild a 4 foot brick column for the new porch. We paid a $2500 deposit for this new work.

After weeks of excuses and delays (which held up our other trades and slowed the project as a whole) Bill dropped off 2 guys on a Sunday morning. Their repairs were shoddy (see photos) and the new column looks like the leaning tower of pisa. Very poor quality work. Though Bill himself showed up a few times to “start work on the lintels” (after more cancellations & no-shows, again causing delays for other trades) he always found some reason that he could not do the work— he asked for more detailed instructions from our engineer (though the original drawings were sufficient), he needed our carpenter to further prep the area, etc; this went on for weeks. Some of his excuses may have been legit, but most were not. All of them slowed our project down & cost us money. In spite of the fact that we obliged him by paying other people to prep the entire area, had additional engineers reports done, etc. Bill only ever installed 1 of the 4 lintels. He abandoned this job and kept our $2500 deposit.

In the end, Bill also never completed the second phase of cleaning & small repairs, for which he had been PAID IN FULL. He never contacted us to explain or discuss & would not take our calls or return our repeated messages. In our last message left for Bill we made clear we’d be reviewing him poorly should he not reach out - that was more than a week ago.

Left with no further recourse, we hired a real mason to re-do his poor work & finally install the lintels. They had no problem understanding & completing the original engineers directions. They removed & redid nearly all of Victorian Restorations work at FAR LESS COST & FAR BETTER QUALITY. I only wish we had met them before we met Bill.