Basement Builders

We reached out to basement builders and three other companies for quotes on finishing our basement. The basement builders came in the middle price wise. They originally verbally quoted us around 8 weeks in April 2023. We shopped around for a new house and not finding one decided in October 2023 to finish our basement using the Basement Builders. At the time of us recontacting them they did not say their timelines had changed. We have a small house and wanted to move our laundry room downstairs to make more room upstairs. They started Oct 21, 2023. No different timeline was communicated to us until we met with the designer to pick the finishes. She said it would be after Christmas due to the millwork timeline. My husband reached out to Murray and he said that yes their timelines had changed closer to 12-14 weeks but he figured 3rd week of January they would be done. We continued to see very little progress. They would send a tradesperson who would do a few hours of work one to two days a week. Yes sometimes there is only three hours of work and then a day needs to go by before they can do the next step but there would be days and days between steps. We reached out to Murray with our concerns about the timeline and he just said it was up to construction. We reached out to the owner, Mathew, and only received a curt response that he would tell his people about our concerns. It was becoming very evident that our basement was small and a very low priority.
When we first communicated to them that we wanted the laundry put downstairs my husband was told by the salesperson sure they could do that but not to worry about the cabinets, that it would be faster to do that later. They ended up building a bulkhead where the cabinets would go and then offering a solution of putting in two small 12in cupboards that would cost an extra $4000. This is outrageous. I went to the lighting store to pick the flush mount lights for the basement. I wasn't told that any of the lights had to be a certain size. The flush mount I ended up picking for the laundry area was unable to be installed as they had put a heat vent directly beside the light fixture. They swapped out with one from the stairs because it was to big. The lights sat in our basement not installed for two months with no thought. Once they were installed I got an email from Kristina saying that they swapped the lights. I told her and Murray I was not happy about their solution and neither responded to me. When we met with Kristina it was initially a positive experience but the tile we picked out for the shower ended up being ridiculously expensive for a bathroom basement. She was unable at the time of selections to give us the prices of anything that would be upgrades. When we said we didn't want to go ahead with that tile and I would like to try and find a different one it was impossible to find a time to meet with her again. I have a job to go to and she was on vacation or was never able to meet me on my schedule. She left one tile option at the tile store for me to look at and basically I was on my own after that if I didn't like it.
We already had a bedroom in our basement and wanted it to match the rest of the basement so we had said we would have them take out the flooring that was in it and put carpet to match the rest of the basement. They forgot to order the carpet. Murray said that he would give us a quote on getting baseboards in this room and forgot. They did end up giving us the baseboards for free which was ok.
Once it came time to do the finishing touches things kept going wrong and extending the project more and more weeks. They broke a tile on the bathroom floor then wrecked two more tiles fixing the first broken one. They didn't put caulking originally around the shower in the bathroom. The paint looked terrible in most places especially in the corners. They kept sending people back to do these small touch ups but two or three things would be touched up at a time then we would have to wait days to a week for more touch ups to happen. At the end of the day this project was not finished until Feb 28. They ended up taking 18 weeks to finish a 600 sq ft basement.
Until the construction manager, Brian got involved and started completing some of the small things himself it was painful.

The lack of planning and communication was insulting.