In short, this is a very dishonest company. The owner (Keith Hay) cuts corners looking for ways to increase his profit margin in anyway possible. His salesman Eric is just as bad and does the opposite of what he promises and is just a vulgar individual (sends aggressive texts and emails). They cut costs, and installed very undersized floor joists and beams, which then required the use of 20 posts for support, which essentially eliminated the space outside my walkout basement (which was NEVER mentioned and never pointed out to us). Half of the posts are splitting severely from not staggering the lag bolts and not notching the posts correctly.
I had Woodcraft build my Trex deck in 2014. Originally, I gave this company a 5 star review after they had asked several times to write a review for them. At the time not knowing the issues that I later noticed, I gladly was willing to help them out.
Two years later when we went to have our patio installed underneath the deck, since we have a walkout, I had 3 cement companies tell me about the corners that had been cut with my deck. They all recommended removing some posts before proceeding with a patio since we have 20 posts underneath our roughly 500sq foot deck. They stated to me, that Woodcraft did a well known cost cutting technique that many homeowners would never notice, but reputable deck companies would never try unless specified. They used undersized 2x6 joists and sistered 2x8 beams. The lumbar is not nearly strong enough unless you use massive amounts of posts (20 to be exact) and in 3 rows of posts instead of 2 to compensate. I spoke with 3 more deck companies that corroborated these exact statements. Essentially, the walkout area of our basement has been rendered useless because there is a post everywhere you walk. This was never brought up to us at any point. Keith stated, well "it was built to code."
Well code is the bare minimum, and that's just what he did. Keith also said that we never stated the obvious, which was that we would want to use our walkout area as a patio in the future. I never knew we needed to state that we would want to use the space outside our walkout, under our deck. They even placed a post right in the middle of the walkout doors due to their cost cutting measures. Eric's reasoning was, "well most people don't want to be under the deck because of spider webs and spiders..." Ridiculous. This was only the beginning. We have several posts that are cracking right down the middle due to Woodcraft not using a staggered pattern on the lags to attach the posts to the beams. The integrity of the posts are clearly compromised as I can fit my fingers in the cracks, that's how deep they are. I brought this up to Keith and gave me no resolution to it, and didn't care or offer to fix/replace them.
THIS IS WHERE IT GETS REALLY BAD. I asked for Woodcraft to provide me a quote to Beef up the supporting lumbar so that posts could be removed as they should of from the beginning. I got the run around several times, ignored phone calls, emails and texts. I set up a meeting with Keith after Eric continued his overly aggressive personality towards me and demanded I remove my 1 star rating from Google. Keith's secretary called me 4 hours before the scheduled meeting to cancel and reschedule because "Eric couldn't make it." Big surprise. Keith offered no apology even though I took time off and arranged to have my 4 kids taken care of. Instead, he was willing to start a shouting match over the phone and stating I was basically lying about everything and had no reason to complain. I looked past ALL of this. They FINALLY offered me up a quote to get rid of 6 posts and putting in stronger beams for $6,200. Keith stated that there may be one more option for an up charge to get rid of more posts so I waited for this second option. He emailed me the next day with option 2 at $9,500 to get rid of 7 posts and stronger lumbar. I told him, it wasn't worth it to me to get rid of just 1 more post for $3,300 more, so I said I will just stick with the quoted option #1 that I received at around $6,500 (but said he would do it for $6,200). He then backtracked and said he can only do option #2 for $9,500 which is OVER half of what we paid for our ENTIRE deck. I told him that we wanted to accept the first written quote and he refused to honor it. He then sent me an email saying he doesn't want to work with me. I asked why he gave me a written quote that he would no longer honor and he had no answer. PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY! One of the worst experiences I have ever had.
Woodcraft Design & Build Reviews
In short, this is a very dishonest company. The owner (Keith Hay) cuts corners looking for ways to increase his profit margin in anyway possible. His salesman Eric is just as bad and does the opposite of what he promises and is just a vulgar individual (sends aggressive texts and emails). They cut costs, and installed very undersized floor joists and beams, which then required the use of 20 posts for support, which essentially eliminated the space outside my walkout basement (which was NEVER mentioned and never pointed out to us). Half of the posts are splitting severely from not staggering the lag bolts and not notching the posts correctly.
I had Woodcraft build my Trex deck in 2014. Originally, I gave this company a 5 star review after they had asked several times to write a review for them. At the time not knowing the issues that I later noticed, I gladly was willing to help them out.
Two years later when we went to have our patio installed underneath the deck, since we have a walkout, I had 3 cement companies tell me about the corners that had been cut with my deck. They all recommended removing some posts before proceeding with a patio since we have 20 posts underneath our roughly 500sq foot deck. They stated to me, that Woodcraft did a well known cost cutting technique that many homeowners would never notice, but reputable deck companies would never try unless specified. They used undersized 2x6 joists and sistered 2x8 beams. The lumbar is not nearly strong enough unless you use massive amounts of posts (20 to be exact) and in 3 rows of posts instead of 2 to compensate. I spoke with 3 more deck companies that corroborated these exact statements. Essentially, the walkout area of our basement has been rendered useless because there is a post everywhere you walk. This was never brought up to us at any point. Keith stated, well "it was built to code."
Well code is the bare minimum, and that's just what he did. Keith also said that we never stated the obvious, which was that we would want to use our walkout area as a patio in the future. I never knew we needed to state that we would want to use the space outside our walkout, under our deck. They even placed a post right in the middle of the walkout doors due to their cost cutting measures. Eric's reasoning was, "well most people don't want to be under the deck because of spider webs and spiders..." Ridiculous. This was only the beginning. We have several posts that are cracking right down the middle due to Woodcraft not using a staggered pattern on the lags to attach the posts to the beams. The integrity of the posts are clearly compromised as I can fit my fingers in the cracks, that's how deep they are. I brought this up to Keith and gave me no resolution to it, and didn't care or offer to fix/replace them.
THIS IS WHERE IT GETS REALLY BAD. I asked for Woodcraft to provide me a quote to Beef up the supporting lumbar so that posts could be removed as they should of from the beginning. I got the run around several times, ignored phone calls, emails and texts. I set up a meeting with Keith after Eric continued his overly aggressive personality towards me and demanded I remove my 1 star rating from Google. Keith's secretary called me 4 hours before the scheduled meeting to cancel and reschedule because "Eric couldn't make it." Big surprise. Keith offered no apology even though I took time off and arranged to have my 4 kids taken care of. Instead, he was willing to start a shouting match over the phone and stating I was basically lying about everything and had no reason to complain. I looked past ALL of this. They FINALLY offered me up a quote to get rid of 6 posts and putting in stronger beams for $6,200. Keith stated that there may be one more option for an up charge to get rid of more posts so I waited for this second option. He emailed me the next day with option 2 at $9,500 to get rid of 7 posts and stronger lumbar. I told him, it wasn't worth it to me to get rid of just 1 more post for $3,300 more, so I said I will just stick with the quoted option #1 that I received at around $6,500 (but said he would do it for $6,200). He then backtracked and said he can only do option #2 for $9,500 which is OVER half of what we paid for our ENTIRE deck. I told him that we wanted to accept the first written quote and he refused to honor it. He then sent me an email saying he doesn't want to work with me. I asked why he gave me a written quote that he would no longer honor and he had no answer. PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY! One of the worst experiences I have ever had.