Coons Construction LLC

I truly hope that someone who is considering hiring Coons Construction LLC (owned by Nathan Coons) reads this review first. (I know it’s lengthy, but we wanted to be thorough.) Choosing a contractor for a remodel is not a decision that should be taken lightly, so I encourage you to gather as much information as you can before signing a contract. Don’t just read reviews; ask for references, and look up the contractors using their contractor license ID to see if there are any lawsuits or complaints against them. Let’s start with the positives. (1) Nathan used a site called BuilderTrend in which he uploaded invoices, timecards, receipts, etc. This made it easy to see exactly where all of our money was going and how much time was being spent. (2) Nathan holds weekly meetings to discuss the project, providing an opportunity to communicate regularly. (3) Nathan clearly has the skill and know-how to do quality work. The work he was able to complete was well-done. Now, for our concerns & issues. In short, Nathan was untruthful with us from the beginning and demonstrated poor work ethic and time management. You can see the details of this below. (1) When we first met Nathan, all the projects he showed us were incomplete. That should have been a red flag, but we just figured it was because he worked with people who wanted to finish things themselves. Our project was also left unfinished by Nathan, not because we wanted it that way, but because there was no way Nathan could finish the project in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost. Ultimately, we had to make the decision to finish things ourselves. Again, this was not the ideal situation for us. (2) Throughout the project Nathan repeatedly told us we were on time and on/under budget. However, after looking over everything that had been done and still needed to be done, we had our doubts about the accuracy of that statement. When we brought up questions and concerns at our meeting Nathan became very defensive. He lectured us on the construction industry and pointed out several places that he “could” be billing us, but was not. This felt like a threat, and made us hesitant to ask him questions in the future, believing that he might start billing us for these unnecessary expenses. (As a side note, until we asked questions, Nathan had been nothing but friendly. After we asked questions, the working relationship went downhill fast). (3) With us working from home during the project, we were able to track the hours Nathan was at the house, and compare those hours to the ones he billed us. The hours billed, and the hours we documented were very similar until the last couple weeks of the project. We had told Nathan we were going to finish the work he was supposed to have done. On the next invoice, he rounded up his hours on multiple occasions, billing us an additional 5 hours, that (according to our documentation) he didn’t work. (Again, until this point the hours worked, and the hours we documented were basically the exact same). It’s also important to point out that the work he rounded up for was on-site work, so it’s not possible that he was making calls or researching off-site. Additionally, at the start of the project, if Nathan had a 10 minute meeting with a sub (e.g., electrical), he only billed 30 minutes, but on this particular invoice, he billed a full hour for a 5-7 minute meeting. This is indicative that he was intentionally rounding up to bill us more unnecessarily. Billing for this additional time may be customary in the construction industry, but since most of the project was not this way, it felt to us like he was trying to make up for the time we were not allowing him to bill us for by ending the project “early”. (4) When we first hired Nathan he told us that we could save money by doing some of the work ourselves. This turned out not to be the case. The estimate he presented with us was about 10k over the amount he initially said the project would be. We decided to continue with signing the contract after he told us that it included contingencies and that if we were doing some of the work ourselves, it would bring us down closer to the original amount. However, there developed a pattern of Nathan reminding us that most contractors do not allow homeowners to do work while the contractor is “on-site”. One of the main reasons we picked Nathan to do our remodel was that he told us he was fine with us doing as much work as we were capable of on the project to bring the cost down. After taking over several projects from Nathan, we were still on track to spend the amount listed in the estimate. He acknowledged some of the money was no longer in the budget by making a change order to remove things that we said from the beginning we would be completing. Then he told us that if there was an issue in the end with us feeling like we did not save enough based on the work we did ourselves, he would bill us for the time it takes to calculate that savings. So, he kept saying we were under budget without acknowledging what was no longer in the scope of his work, and we were not able to object because then it would have cost us additional money. (5) When we first met Nathan, he estimated that the project would be 11 weeks. He even talked about being willing to work longer days if needed to make sure things were done on time. Throughout the project, his poor work ethic and time management became clear. Despite having all the necessary materials on-site, Nathan only worked full days (7-8 hours) or hired someone else to work a full day 43.8% of the time. He worked partial days (3-6 hours) 40.6% of the time, and chose not to work at all 15.6% of the time. If he put in full days or hired someone else, we would have been significantly closer to the timeline initially presented. Instead, the project was “completed” after 16 weeks, and we still have work to finish that Nathan wasn’t able to complete in the time frame. (6) When we met with Nathan, we got the impression that he had a regular team of workers, but he does not. He hires from a labor pool of people with varied experience. He told us that some of the guys were still learning, but we were paying them the same rate as Nathan for jobs that took them twice as long to complete. For example, we paid for 9 hours on a window install that should have taken about 4 hours, because according to Nathan, the guy doing it was “still learning.” It took the worker 7 hours to install the window, and then we had to pay 2 additional supervisor hours. When we asked Nathan about that, he didn’t seem to understand our concern. Instead, he kept bringing up the idea of quality over quantity, without acknowledging that work can be both detailed and more efficient. (7) With a cost plus contract, you have to have trust in the person doing the work. There is little incentive for them to work quickly. The longer it takes, the more hours can be billed for. We did not have that trust with Nathan, hence our calculating his hours and not allowing him to do all the work. This was our first major home remodel. We rushed into choosing someone who was available and who seemed like he understood our vision. The subcontractor companies Nathan hired all did excellent work, within the estimates they gave us, and worked quickly and efficiently, with great communication. Our main issues with Nathan were his poor work ethics and his flexibility with the truth. We have both worked on commercial fishing boats. We know what hard work looks like. Nathan does not possess a hard work ethic and maybe that’s why he works for himself. His version of the truth may be believable to him, but there were several things he said at the beginning of our project that turned out not to be true. To us, those felt like lies. (8) Finally, Nathan refused to take responsibility for his own poor communication and time management. He repeatedly made excuses for things or tried to blame other people for his mistakes. We understand that mistakes happen, but to not take responsibility for one’s own actions is a problem for us. Ultimately, I would never hire Nathan Coons again, nor would I recommend him to anyone else. It’s unfortunate, because he has strong skills and knowledge when it comes to building. That just isn’t enough to compensate for all of the other short-falls and incompetencies.

Coons Construction LLC did a great job. They explained the process thoroughly, performed the work professionally, accurately, quickly, and effectively, keeping us apprised of status and what could be expected the entire time. They also came in under budget. We were so pleasantly surprised!