Bholler, first of all, again, thanks for your advice. I know it comes from the desire to help. I don't want my posts to sound combative or give the impression that your advice is not welcome. And I freely admit that I'm relatively ignorant about all of this and will certainly never know half of what you do.
All that said, here is the whole story of our experience with this guy.
My wife researches everything to death. Sometimes she drives me crazy, and I want to say, "Oh, for @&*# sake, just pick one!!" And when it was time to rebuild the chimney, it was no different. We had 7 companies/masons/contractors come over. Some were simply out of our price range. Some just rubbed us the wrong way, and some seemed perfectly fine. Then we checked references. We spoke with customers, contractors, firefighters, and inspectors. One thing that they ALL had in common was that Tim was the guy to get. His prices are good, his work is flawless and his work ethic is amazing. The only problems with him is that he isn't very personable and is virtually impossible to reach unless you're a current customer that he's working with.
Sue tried to reach him for months. She stopped leaving messages, but would call a couple times a week. Finally, one time she called (her name is Sue), and Tim answered the phone, "Hi Maggie." Apparently he was talking to his customer (Maggie), they got disconnected, and he thought it was her calling back. That was our foot in the door and we were able finally get him over to examine the job and give us a quote. Once he convinced us that this low price really included everything, we hired him.
Town inspectors came twice. Once after he'd done all the structural wood retrofitting on the house (there was a ton of rot), and had dug the hole for the footing, and again after the job was complete. Both inspectors not only approved the work, but were very impressed at the job he did, adding structural things that weren't absolutely necessary to pass inspection, but were added safety that was a good idea.
He did the work at the beginning of July. We took the weekend of the Fourth and went camping. I made a quick trip to the house on July 4th to water my tomatoes. He was out on the scaffolding working on the chimney.
"Tim, it's the Fourth of July!"
"So?"
"Don't you take any time off?"
"To do what?"
After it was done, I was talking to a good friend who is a local painting contractor. He asked who did my chimney. I told him, and he replied, "Tim? You got Tim to do it? How the hell did you manage that?? I've been trying to get him for over a year."
We recently had our wood stove installed. I called another mason who was highly recommended to do the installation. He's supposed to be good, but he was expensive ($500). He looked at the work Tim did and was very impressed. That's rare from a competitor.
Many people who know FAR more than I believe that Tim does it right, and I really don't know what I could *possibly* do to investigate this further.
. )
