Porter Buckley Construction Group

I do not recommend this company for any of your home renovation project. Our~ 250K kitchen renovation project with the company started in the summer of 2021 and lasted more than half a year. As of today, nearly two years later, I am still trying to get hold of the project manager Melinda and the head of the company Pete Sullivan to finish the job. Kitchen ceiling already has multiple cracks. A wrong window screen has not been changed. A power panel application that supposedly started more than one and half years ago is nowhere to be found. Melinda and Pete have not been responsive to our requests after we finished all the payments on time. Management at this company may have serious issues. I recommend to avoid using them as much as you can.
Mar 17th, 2023

Oct 23rd, 2022

Great company if you dislike your neighbors. My neighbors have had a project (proudly displaying a Porter Buckley sign) going on for over a year now. I, along with other other neighbors, live further down a one-lane road. Despite working on a large property with multiple acres available, our one-lane road is constantly blocked by parked vehicles, concrete pouring vehicles set up blocking the road (no neighbors were ever informed of this beforehand), stuck vehicles (a large truck got stuck in the mud blocking the entire road. I dont blame the driver. He told me that someone was supposed to be at site to show him where to deposit gravel, but the site was deserted that day.) . I have had lunch trash dumped in my yard, vehicles parked in my driveway (throwing cigarette butts out the window), neighborhood signs hit and damaged by construction vehicles, etc. For a while, loud banging was occurring daily well before the 7:00am Baltimore County ordinance allows. If you dont care about your neighbors, this might be an ok choice - they have been working on this project for over a year so pretty slow. Otherwise, please look elsewhere.
Mar 14th, 2022

We used PB to do an extensive renovation. We made the decision to spend more $ for a reputable contractorhindsight it was not worth it. They start out very strong with lots of attention and dazzle you with great sales pitches and promiseswe fell for it. By the end of our project we were so sick of them having to redo work as a result of careless mistakes and poor quality that we settled our final payment and ended up doing much of the final punch list items ourselves. They became unresponsive, often taking days or weeks to get back to us about scheduling and timelines. Long story very short, I would not use them. While they do have some great subs, they are not worth dealing with and will leave you disappointed and frustrated.
Oct 31st, 2021

We hired PB on a recommendation from our real estate agent after we purchased a penthouse apartment. We needed a lot of work done. We eventually met with the residential arm of the company and were assured of "white glove" treatment, attention to detail, and work would be done in a timely fashion. We asked for estimates along the way. We were delighted with their approach. They started off on time (without estimate) with a room that needed to be completely redone. This included a new built in desk, drawers and cabinets. The quality of the wood used was just OK. One of the drawer fronts was a bit warped. One of the walls had to be repaired multiple times (not smooth, and not repaired well. The subs that did the tile work and countertops were excellent; the work was perfect and on time. Plumbing sub for replacement of sinks and vanities was also very good. The electrical work was good, but we did have to hire one of our own to fix a network connection (repeatedly told was good but was not). 2 of the 3 paint contractors (we had 3 different ones) were poor. We had doors that were only painted partially or the wrong color, and touch ups done with the wrong paint several times. In the end, they also took all of the extra paint (that we paid for). We should have gone with California Closets in the bedroom, it would be the same price. The sub who did this used cheap laminates, caused splitting of the material with the screws used to attach hardware, did not build to our specification, did not attach trim (was just laid down at the base). The custom built-in for our dining drawers does not line up properly, with faces that are not flush and uneven gaps. The wood is soft with very thin laminate on it that damages as soon as you bump it with anything. We are going to have this redone by Techline (used them for our Manhattan apartment and they did excellent work for less than we paid PB) at a cost of $20,000. In the kitchen, they took one of our cabinet doors to their shop to try to refinish it. They sanded off nearly all of the expensive African hardwood laminate and it looked terrible. They did give us a quote to refinish the entire kitchen (this is the ONLY estimate we got), but we declined. We ended up going with The Cabinet Restoration Company. They were less expensive, did the joh on the dates they promised - on time, on budget, and the refinishing was perfect - the cabinets look like new, even the one PB ruined. Our "supervisor" did not see any of the defects on any part of the job - we had to inspect and point all of this out, again making me question why we paid for over a hundred hours of supervision. She did not recognize any of the issues, but was charging us an additional $75/hour (to which the 15% overhead fee applied). Not sure what the 15% overhead got us since we were also charged the supervision fee. Communication was also poor. In the end, we paid over $100,000 to PB, and will need to revise some of the work, specifically the cabinets in our den and dining room. The job took 9 MONTHS, and could have easily been completed in 4. They would do some work, then disappear for weeks, leaving materials behind and making it difficult to use our laundry room for months (they used it for storage). Our door lock is electronic and logs all entry and exit, and we were billed for many hours during which time there were no workers here. The explanation (that took 2 weeks to get) was that they were working on the materials at their shop. However, for many of these hours billed, the finished materials were laying on the floor of our apartment (lost use of our den for 2 months). Most frustrating were the thousands of dollars billed for supervision, yet we were the ones that had to identify and repeatedly request that the defects be corrected (oh, and we were also charged for the time it took to fix the defects, plus more supervision). We did pay our bill (reluctantly), just to be done with this company. Now on to replacing the poor woodwork with some good stuff.
Jun 2nd, 2019