They arrived in a timely manner. The project manager was good and dependable.
The adjusters recommended the company, and I wasn't satisfied.
Bay Area DKI was very helpful, and their subcontractors were hard worker's as well.
They were good. They were very cooperative.
My first Bay Area DKI project manager was very poor, communicate was horrible. The second project manager who took over at the end of the work being performed was better and communicated. I would give Kingdom roofing company who was the sub contractor a 5 star rating, communication and work was fantastic. I was not overly impressed with Bay Area DKI.
Poor communication and little to no follow-up. I had to fire them before the job was complete due to the ongoing issues trying to get the work scheduled.
I will never use Bay Area DKI again.
Do NOT hire this company.
Please read this. I hired Bay Area DKI after presenting them with 3 recent, very negative, reviews from the Tampa Better Busines Bureau. I grilled their representative, Mike O., about these reviews. He had very good answers, it seemed, for all three reviews. Still somewhat leery, I gave him a directive that I must be able to TRUST the contractor that I choose. Trust, Transparency, and Communication is a prime must as my storm damages were near $150,000. He convinced me they could handle all while meeting my expectations.
WRONG. Now there will be a fourth negative review on the Tampa BBB site. I was out of my home for almost 4 months during repairs which took 10 months. Three different DKI Project Managers and absolutely NO communication between them as the previous one each time either left DKI or was fired. So basically, I became the Project Manager. When I returned to a “Move In Ready” home, I went 3 weeks without vanities in my bathrooms and only running water in one bathroom which was in the bathtub. I went 7 weeks without a functional kitchen; no kitchen cabinets, no range, no sink nor running water. During these 4 months of being ousted from my home, I visited my home at least once every day. Good thing I did.
They hired guys off the streets as their subcontractors (3 groups of painters in and out of my home among many others) with no experience in the area hired for. Very early on I realized I had a problem when they painted the interior walls and ceiling (albeit the wrong colors and sheens after I gave them all the paint codes, sheens and samples) before repairing cracks and nail pops in the walls and ceilings in every room of the house. NOBODY does that.
Project Manager #2 ordered and planned my home based on what HE wanted me to have, not what I had given him in a 13-page document. He advised the Kitchen Cabinets and Bathroom Vanities would have to be replaced and would be covered by insurance as the cracked floor tiles went under the each. I never got the kitchen cabinets that I ordered as I settled for what they wanted me to have after the 4th set of cabinets had been delivered (One set sat out in the driveway for 5 hours after I advised they had been delivered and the forecast was for heavy rain. It did and they were destroyed.) That was the day Project Manager #2 was fired.
After his firing, Mike O. presented me with a Change Order to sign for almost $5000 because of the upgrades I wanted. I had not asked for any upgrades, I just followed the lead of PM #2. NO WAY I WAS GOING TO SIGN THAT DOCUMENT.
I could go on and on. I settled for the wrong shingles they put on the house. I installed my own vanities in the bathrooms just to be able to have necessities to live. The tile work in the master bath shower was installed so that a shower door, which I had ordered in the beginning, could not be installed and had to be returned. After the third coat of paint inside my home, I settled for rooms the wrong sheen.
I had to get their overseeing company, Alacrity, involved to get my home livable. Once Alacrity got involved, it was a different story. I lost a lot of brain cells this year because of DKI, and I would never recommend them to anyone. My out-of-pocket cost was over $10,000 because of DKI. When they approached me to sign a “Letter of Satisfaction” in order to get warranties on everything, I refused until they changed the “Letter of Satisfaction” to a “Letter of Completion”, as I am not satisfied!
DO NOT HIRE BAY AREA DKI
The quality of the product is great, but the scheduling and communication was terrible.
I would say my previous comments apply here. Ultimately, we did get the job we were promised and our home was restored to the condition it was in before the flood. That is the result we ended up with but it should not have taken that long to do. Part of the reason we are satisfied is because we were so frustrated that my husband completed one phase of the work himself . There were baseboards that had to be replaced which they did but then they still needed to be caulked. It the last day they were there that they brought the caulk and my husband said to just give it to him and that he would do it himself.
with a caveat that they not sign a release until everything is completed satisfactorily
The field manager was very good and thorough.
Bay Area DKI made many promises and lived up to known of them. I would not recommend them as a contractor for any restoration!
The personal are wonderful to work with and are very responsive.
I would use Bay Area DKI again.
They really worked well. I really appreciated them being very easy to work with and scheduling things.
I'm not a stranger to construction and home improvement projects, as I've been doing them since I was a child. I could have done the work myself if I had the time. Throughout the process, fiends and family including people that do the types of work that I had done, kept asking about why the project wasn't done or why it was taking so long. The first estimate that I received was for the cabinets. I was told that it should take about 3 weeks to come I, but It took 6+ weeks for them to come in. During this time, painting was done, some carpet was replaced, and then my countertops were removed. I had to follow behind these guys because they were either cutting corners or not being competent in doing their jobs. With having a fire, the drywall and ceilings had smoke damage. If you just cover it up with paint, the smell will seep through. The estimate said to coat all of the ceilings and walls in the affected rooms with a latex paint to create a barrier for the smell to not seep through. After they had already painted the ceilings and had not done this, they had to go back and do it. But, they only did the ceilings, and not any of the walls. I hope that they didn't send a false claim to my insurance company for work that they didn't do. The next thing that I didn't like is that ALL of the work was subcontracted. This means that I'm working on other peoples' schedules, and that makes my project on a do it when you can time frame. Most of the time, it was relatively quick that people came out, but other times, it took for ever. After that, I don't really think that there was ever a timeline to get things completed for the project. An estimate of 2 months turned into 4+ months, and things weren't done in the correct order either. Cabinets were installed before demolition was completed. This is a simple concept to understand, and I don't know why it didn't happen. I shouldn't have had to point it out to them. My countertops were removed 3 weeks before the cabinets came in, so I was unable to use the space and not able to even wash dishes because the sink was removed too. After the cabinets were in, they didn't realize until I said something that it was 3 weeks later and 3 visits later from the granite company, and they had not even started to cut the granite to install it. If it took 3 visits to get the correct dimensions, that's a big issue on competence. And 3 weeks of waiting and delaying additional work which they didn't even realize was happening showed that they didn't care about any kind of timeline for project completion. Once I said something, they got a new person in to get measurements and had everything completed within a week which was fantastic. Early on in the process, I picked out a backsplash concept, and the gentleman said that he'd write it down for when we were ready for it to be installed. That was never done, and when it came time to install it, they were clueless on what the discussed pattern was supposed to be, along with the materials. I had chosen white accent tiles and said that didn't want metallic. They brought the metallic ones which I accepted because I was at this time over the whole process and I wanted it to end. After that was chosen, the guy didn't install the accents in the correct location that I discussed with him myself. They had to get someone to come back and take down some of the backsplash and put it up again correctly. Around this time, I had a backup in my AC unit for my downstairs. It caused water damage to the room below it and adjacent to it. I notified my project manager about it the night that it happened, and I didn't get any response about it until middle of the following week (it did happen on a Friday night). They asked if they could come and take pictures of it which was great. Then, I didn't hear anything about it for about 2 weeks when I asked what was going on. I checked with the owner of the cleaning crew that was in my home before DKI came in, and they said that they cleaned out my handler, ducts, and lines. I also contacted a couple of people to see how long a line would take to clog, and they said not in just a few months. I had to tell the contractor that the AC filters and grates were #1 on the estimate, and they weren't replaced until 3+ months into the project. The cleaning company left them out because they knew the ceilings would need to be painted and to save some time. The people at DKI said that I didn't provide them with the grates and stuff, so they weren't put back up. So, when they glanced over the "remove and replace" part of it on line #1 of the work orders, they didn't do anything or say anything or ask any questions about them. And, after about an hour of trying to unclog the line the night that the damage was caused, the grates had been put back up, but no filters were put in. At least have the curtesy to tell me that you didn't put any in, and that I need to. I would have done it that day if I had known. But, if you think about it, they were removed due to the fire, which means that new filters should have been installed and charged to the insurance company for replacement due to the damage. But, they then said that the work that they did shouldn't have been able to clog up the pipes because there wasn't enough stuff in the air to do that. They next proceeded to say that they couldn't say how good of a job the other company did on cleaning it. This was a very rude comment in my opinion because DKI didn't send anyone up to this point to look at the unit either. After I contacted my insurance company about the situation, they contacted DKI about it, and DKI sent people out to record the damage (again? you took pictures already, why was it needed again?) and put together an addendum to fix the damage. This addendum was actually completed very quickly. After the AC technicians that they sent over were finished, they told me that the installation of the units wasn't done correctly, and that's why the unit didn't shut off when it should have, but that wouldn't have contributed to the problem of a clogged line. Had the unit been installed correctly, it would have shut off and no damage would have been caused. But, had the grates and filters been installed after the painting had been completed, the line wouldn't have got clogged, and the damage wouldn't have had a possibility of happening at that time. Other things that delayed the process included replacing the microwave and oven. The oven was the incorrect size which was a simple mistake. Hanging the microwave was an adventure because it took a couple of tries and getting people over to actually hang it. The back patio was sealed and painted without any problems. The colors and the actual painting of the rooms was done well.
Good work and our Project Manager, John Nunes was the best gentleman to work with. One issue we had was handled professionally and there by our side until we were satisfied.