Crazy Dave's Handyman And Home Improvements

Apologies in advance as this will be a long post but I think it's worth sharing our experience as there are no reviews for this company online.

TL;DR
Owner very unprofessional, misses timelines and doesn't communicate with his customers. DO NOT RECOMMEND GOING WITH THIS COMPANY!

Back in May of 2021 we found this company through their Facebook page and their work appeared to look pretty good with some large projects and good looking pics. But pictures can be deceiving. As a friend told me, pictures don't tell you how long a job took to complete. We decided to get a quote from them to do our project as I had found out that one of our friends were also using him to do their pool installation and they had good things to say. However, I couldn't find any relevant information about the company online. There were literally zero reviews for them online even though they had been in business for a while.

Dave arrived on the scheduled date to take a look at what we wanted to do (new flooring and staircase) and whether he could do it or not. He said that it would be no problem to do the job and that it was about 2.5 weeks worth of work. Similar timelines to what other companies had quoted us on and the price was within their range as well. After about a week or so I reached out to them to find out if they were ready with the quote and I was told that it would be ready in the next day or so. It was finally ready a couple of days later and after reviewing a few things ourselves and with them we decided to give them the ok to do our project.

They were very interested in getting a deposit ASAP and the one thing that irked me about the estimate itself was the fact that they wanted a 30% deposit. In hindsight I should have said no since that was a fairly large amount of money for work that wouldn't commence for another two months. But we wanted to get the project going so we went ahead with it. Elizabeth (office manager) told us that we could pay Dave with a credit card over the phone and later that same day he called to get the money. So now he had our money and we waited for the start date which was tentatively set for end of July to early August.

About mid July I reached out to Elizabeth to check on whether they had a firm start date for us yet. No response for an entire week after which she apologized for not replying as she was away. Odd that only one person could give us an update when both Elizabeth and Dave were included in the email. We were told that it was tentative for mid next week as they had another project wrapping up. At this point our friends reached out to us to warn us to not go with this company as they had had a horrible experience with their project. It was like a punch to the gut because we had already given a large deposit and they were set to start the following week.

Mid week came and no one arrived so I emailed to inquire about the missed start date. Elizabeth said that they had ran over with their other project but that they would be coming on the Friday. Just before a long weekend. Needless to say no one showed up again and this time I was assured that they would be coming on the Tuesday morning after the long weekend.

Two men (Tayshawn and Wayne) showed up on the Tuesday at around 10:30am. They said they were from the company but they didn't really seem to know what work they were to do so I told them that it was to demo the existing floor. We were a little disappointed with the quality of work done. Not only did it seem very unprofessional but also they took no care in keeping the area neat and clean as they claim on their estimate. Demo took three days (really 2 since Tayshawn left early the second day and Wayne never returned) and then he was "done" but the job was not really completed. We had also had some damage done to the walls, ceramic tile and wiring. I had mentioned this to Dave but I never got a response on what was to be done about it.

During the week of the demo, we had good email dialogue between myself and Elizabeth. First thing that was being discussed was the flooring samples. This ended up taking much longer than we expected as the samples being provided did not seem to match the colour and size we were going for. We were also told that samples for the pickets of the staircase would be sent but nothing ever arrived. That Friday of the first week also had Dave's flooring guy (Jay) come to take measurements but he also seemed confused about what he was there to do so he called Dave up. I overheard some of the conversation in which Dave asked him if he was interested in doing the job and he said yes. So basically Dave was sub-contracting out the work that we had hired him to do.

The following week there was no onsite work done but they dropped off some flooring samples but those were no match either. To move things along we ended up going to look for samples ourselves at nearby flooring stores. We found the perfect one and this was communicated back to Dave and Elizabeth and we were told that it would be no problem and that they would be ordering the flooring right away. We received an email on the Friday that the flooring might be picked up later that day and we also got pictures of the pickets to choose from. The flooring never arrived.

That was the theme for most of the month of August. Every other day that I emailed them to ask where the flooring was we were assured that the flooring had been ordered and that it was being picked up. But delivery dates that were promised were always missed. The picket samples that we were sent also didn't appeal to us so we went to visit the place from where they were ordering them from. Sadly the person at that place told us that the ones we wanted would take an additional two weeks to order and because we didn't want to be the cause of further delays to the project, we went with a plain version of the pickets which were readily available. We communicated this back to Dave and Elizabeth and they assured us that they would order the pickets but they never were. Our railing was also removed around this time which gave us the impression of things moving along but it never did.

Towards the last week of August we were very frustrated with the lack of progress on the project. Calls and emails to both Elizabeth and Dave would go unanswered. Dave would even direct our calls straight to voicemail with every call attempt. Very unprofessional. By this point we decided to reach out to some of his other clients to see how their projects were going.

One client told us that it was the worst experience they had ever had and they wished they had never gone with him. Another client said similar things to us with the common theme being that he always stretched the truth to them about work getting done and that they would never show up to do the work that was promised. Our friends that had the pool installed also told us about their horrible experience with him. It was also around this time that Dave took down the Reviews section on his Facebook page as one of his clients had posted a negative review. He had also removed the option of giving a review on his website and on Yelp. Why would a company do that unless they didn't like all the negative feedback they were getting. Since it had been a full month of very little work being done and that he had our large deposit, we couldn't exactly fire him so we had to wait for at least our flooring portion to be completed.

Again and again we would try calling or emailing them for updates. When Elizabeth would actually respond, she would say that the flooring had been ordered and that they were trying to schedule to have it delivered. When I would ask them to give me their order number so I could go pick it up for them they would just ignore me.

As the Labour Day long weekend was approaching, I reached out to them again to express our disappointment and frustration. They said that the flooring would come during the weekend and that Jay could come on the Monday to start working on it. Nothing ever arrived or got worked on. After the long weekend I sent an email to express that if nothing got done by end of week we would be looking at other options.

The following week we were told that the flooring would arrive and come mid week it finally did. Except that it was only half of the required amount. I emailed them to ask when the rest would be delivered and was told that it would arrive the following week but it never did. Jay's start time also kept being missed and him and his crew didn't arrive until a full week after the first flooring had been delivered.

The flooring install only took a couple of days because the crew ran out of flooring material. I tried reaching out to Dave again but never received a response. Finally after many calls and emails he called me back to apologize and say that the rest of the flooring would be delivered this week and that Jay would continue. We were now into the third week of September and the flooring had still not arrived. At this point I informed Dave that we would no longer need him to do other portions of the job and that we wanted the rest of the flooring delivered ASAP. Low and behold the rest of the flooring arrived the following day but it took Jay another week before he was back to continue the installation.

After a couple of days the flooring was completed by Jay and we were forced to find someone else to complete the rest of our job since we couldn't wait for Dave's schedule to get our lives back in order. The rest of the job was completed on time (2.5 weeks) and in a very professional manner by the other company.

To say that we were disappointed, angry and frustrated with this company is an understatement. While things appeared to start well the first week, things went downhill afterwards. No commitment on timelines or milestones that would be met. The missed dates for workers to be onsite (it's a good thing I work from home because if I had to constantly ask my employer to work from home because a contractor might come I would have been fired by now). Bad or none existent project management. The constant ghosting/ignoring of our calls and inquiries. The flat out non-truths that things had been ordered and that they were being delivered. It's one thing to miss a delivery date. It's another thing to continue saying the same line to a client week after week after week. And I would say that both Dave and Elizabeth were complicit in deceiving us since they both would tell us similar things so both were in on it. And based on what their other clients had told us, it seems like it's true. We also found out that Elizabeth is his sister in-law so it would make sense that they would collude on what to say to their clients. Dave never even set foot in our house except for that day he came to provide the quote. What kind of owner/worker doesn't even bother visiting his projects to see how they are progressing? And the fact that he farmed this work out to another company makes me ponder why we even went through him in the first place? Why have a middle man get in the way and cause delays?

What also pains us is what we had to put our family through. All of us had to sleep on couches and live out of suitcases during this reno which started the night before the demo. This was supposed to be a 2.5 week job maybe 3 weeks tops. One could "rough it" for that time knowing that the outcome would be welcomed. We ended up having to live like that for over 2.5 months before we had our house back in order. We've had other major renos done in our home which took months to complete but we were in agreement with those timelines and made the appropriate accommodations. My wife said all along that if he hadn't started the demo which forced us to sleep on couches, we would have been fine with the delays. But lack of communication was the problem with this company. It was missing. There's a saying that "bad news is better than no news". If there's any feedback I could provide to them it's to communicate with your clients and be upfront with them.

So no, we do not recommend going with this company for any kind of renovation or handy man kind of work. Avoid going through the headaches we went through.