Urban Design & Construction Ltd

If it were possible to give this company negative stars, I would. DO NOT HIRE THIS COMPANY. CJ is manipulative and dishonest. Their prices may be lower than others, but the headache, lack of timeliness and follow through are not worth it. The project will not finish on time and CJ will twist circumstances to make the client feel like its a «misunderstanding» or the client’s lack of communication/​fault. If you have your doubts, ask others who have utilized them. Get a list of all the business property owners they’ve worked with and get as many references as possible. It won’t take you long to find out that the money you supposedly save up front will ultimately cost you more in time, change orders, and frustration. Be cautious of some of their subcontractors, primarily HVAC and plumbing. They will get the job done, but it’s not always right. The areas of construction by those subcontractors are the most expensive portions of your project, so rework will be needed. CJ and Gary won’t take any responsibility for their subcontractors and you’ll be responsible to pay for the rework. I can’t stress enough, do your homework before hiring this company. I can’t say I’m surprised by the other 1 star Unilocal reviews.

If it was possible to give a negative star review I would do it. We hired this company to remove a wall, remove carpet and to install/​stain hardwoods on the main level of our home. When the estimate was discussed they told us that they thought it would take about a week to get it all completed. Now, we aren’t idiots so we fully expected the project to go over that week estimate but it ended up being a full month before it was completed. Yes, there were some extenuating circumstances which delayed work but it shouldn’t have been such a lengthy period of time.
The first few days were magical. The wall came down, carpet was ripped out and the hardwoods were put down. Cue the stain issue. After talking about the color we wanted (a brownish-​gray tone) almost daily, emailing pictures to these people and being reassured they would bring samples to us it came down to 15 minutes prior to us being told that we had to be out of the house for 48 hours. The flooring guys then told us that they don’t like to mix stains but did so anyway after we said we didn’t want one of the four colors they presented. Was anyone from Urban present? Not a one. We picked one that looked mildly like what we wanted and left the house.
The stain color is wrong. It is light brown. Not even what we had chosen in our 15 minutes of color play. Urban Designs response? Well, it’s perfect! Resale value! When pressed further the response became harsher. I couldn’t find any samples of what you wanted! The color was in your head and I didn’t know what you wanted!
From there it went downhill. When they actually showed up they came around 11 or noon and worked until 1:00. Fun fact: did you know that most contractors don’t do finish work? Well, that’s what they told us! The estimate says finish work in the pricing but I guess that was just put there for fun. Apparently they will take out furniture and a toilet but not put those things back. Proper finish work where a cabinet was removed? Slap some putty in the wall, don’t sand it down and paint over it. Done! Right? Baseboard caulking was done under duress as «this normally isn’t part of the work». They emailed us repeatedly to tell us of «free» things they had done for us such as cleaning the floors after they had done drywall work.
In the end, we told them of our anger about all these things and how we didn’t want to pay all of the final amount because things either weren’t done or done wrong. The response? They threatened to file a lien on our home. These are some real high-​class business savvy folks!
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT hire this company.

As unexperienced homeowners we hired Urban Design & Construction to remove a wall and install wood floors in our home. They were very vague with the estimate and statement of work allowing them to talk around their responsibilities. CJ Johnson, the business manager, assured us that she would help us pick a stain for our floors that matched our ideas. She never provided samples, never once even asked what we really wanted and then the decision was left for us to make just minutes before the stain went on. Throughout the entire process they showed up late, left early and generally treated us as if we were third class clients.
Their website lists «Service, integrity and style» as their hallmarks. I can’t speak to style because I told them how I wanted things. But as for service and integrity they fall father short of those marks than any other company I’ve ever done business with. Do not hire this company and beware of CJ Johnson and Gary VanDriel. They’ll likely change their business name at some point to escape bad reviews like this but changing their legal personal names is harder.