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Horrible experience
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I have never regretted anything more than dealing with Center Island Contracting (CIC). My project, which added only ~500 square feet to my home, took CIC well over two years on a consensus 4-5 month project, the quality of work is subpar, and I eventually had to hire others to finish the job.
I’ve heard many contractor horror stories, but the lack of respect and lack of integrity I experienced from CIC is something I never could have imagined. I have hired other contractors for several projects and the way it has always worked is: we sign a contract, they do the work, I pay them what we agreed to, we all go home happy. But CIC does not operate in this way. Caleb Haniquet, president of CIC, has a million excuses for delays, shoddy work, and not doing things at all, including: 1) an inability to find workers, 2) too much work, 3) 18 straight (!) company vacation days to celebrate the holidays, 4) your job is too small for me to get people there, 5) their poor quality work is not their fault (huh?), and, my personal favorite, 6) the threat of tariffs make ordering basic materials harder.
Unfortunately, CIC believes in doing the bare minimum: bare minimum work product, bare minimum respect, bare minimum integrity.
Throughout our project, Caleb had almost zero contact with us. To my knowledge, he had not even stepped inside my house until approximately month 9 of the (4 month) project, despite my desperate pleas for help. The project managers, Orlando D’aniello, Evan Lewitas and John Burgois, had been the main representatives of CIC since the project began. Neither they, nor anyone else from CIC, properly supervised or checked subcontractors (who perform the vast majority of the work). The quality of the work they presented as finished was often atrocious and needed to be redone several times to get it even close to right. Things might look good in pictures but when you get up close, the lack of quality is evident. At times, they would even admit, in writing, that their work had issues, only to deny responsibility for fixing it later. I can’t tell you how many times a guest would could to our home and ask, “when are they going to fix that”? Caleb took great lengths to avoid finishing my home, including claiming that 3rd parties, that his team requested me to bring in, were a breach of our contract, and billing me exorbitant amounts for rejected Change Orders.
Virtually no care was taken to protect my existing house - Hardwood floors and carpets weren’t covered, causing scratches and tears, personal items were removed from secured areas and thrown on the floor, and dust and debris was left for us to clean ourselves more often than you would believe. CIC insisted on doing things the "easy" way no matter how ridiculous the outcome - ducts were installed directly in the middle of new closets, plumbing fixtures were installed in the wrong bathrooms (despite clear instructions) to go along with so many other frustrating and time killing mistakes.
The way my family and I have been disrespected is unfathomable. Caleb was extremely inappropriate and disrespectful to us and even made my pregnant wife cry on three separate occasions. (Note: She was not yet pregnant when CIC broke ground on this project, my son is now 9 months old, and I finally decided to get someone else to finish what CIC left unfinished). In one of Caleb’s more heinous moves, despite being made aware of a small area of mold that had developed where CIC’s plumber was working, despite personally examining the area, and despite CIC moving all our personal belongings in the basement several times, Caleb, in my opinion maliciously and to avoid doing work, claimed the basement had a catastrophic mold issue, making it unsafe for my family, and which inhibited CIC’s ability to both work inside the home, and, unbelievably, to do work outside the home. This untrue claim (a certified inspector and laboratory test showed the level of mold spores in the home to be consistent with levels of mold outdoors), which cost me significant money to check and refute, coincidentally came just after a meeting at Caleb’s office in which he became irate that I wanted my house completed. To make matters worse, we cleaned the area and had it re-tested, at my cost, and the home was declared perfectly safe, yet somehow Caleb continued to use it as an excuse to refuse to finish the job he had already been paid for.
This project cost me over $300K, but it could have been significantly more had I not been knowledgeable about home improvement. CIC attempted to hit me up for more money over our contracted price almost 50 documented times and my fear for those who are not knowledgeable about home repairs is CIC taking advantage of you with a long list of unwarranted Change Orders increasing your renovation budget to an untenable point. The ‘overages’ and Change Orders CIC attempted to extort me for would drive any sane person crazy.
For just two examples of many, CIC believed that where the contract stated “contractor to supply and install”, that meant that I had to pay to supply materials myself and they tried to hit me up for an extra charge for installation as well. Or the time CIC installed a new HVAC system as part of our contract: Six months after install, Caleb attempted to extort us for almost $10,000 because, without telling us, they installed the HVAC slightly differently than what the contract states. CIC refused to do any more work unless we paid this exorbitant and unwarranted amount. If that sounds confusing and reprehensible to you, it was to me as well.
Several times CIC demanded immediate payment for contracted items because we were “on the schedule for completion”, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, when in fact those items took an ADDITIONAL YEAR to even start. I also ordered tens of thousands of dollars worth of cabinets from CIC, and the time from my order to when all parts were delivered was well over a year because CIC ordered the wrong parts several times in a row and kept parts in their warehouse for months after they received them. I wish I was making this up.
Worst of all, when I refused to pay unjustified and unagreed upon price increases, CIC walked off the job, even though all contractual payments were up to date, leaving many known safety risks to my young children (exposed nails, exposed electric, tripping hazards, etc.) and unfinished items (tiling, plumbing, uninstalled cabinets, holes in ceilings and walls, etc.). I paid every payment on time and according to the agreement, but CIC didn’t care, and demanded more money to restart work after months of leaving the project unfinished. Caleb even went so far as to alter and deposit a check I wrote months earlier, even though his team hadn’t stepped foot in the house in months.
In an effort to resolve the situation, we went through THREE different mediators, including one which CIC chose themselves and is the head of their own member organization - LIBI. We agreed to every mediation recommendation, but Caleb refused. Caleb would rather spend weeks arguing about why he shouldn’t have to meet his contractual obligations than spend a few minutes actually meeting them.
Making matters worse, if that is even possible, as part of our eventual agreement to finish the job, Caleb demanded that I sign a ‘General Release’, agreeing, among other things, that I will not issue any negative reviews of my horrible experience. It is a shame that in this day and age that a company has to even ask a customer not to post an honest review, and I can only imagine how many unwritten negative are out there because Caleb wouldn’t finish his jobs until honest negative reviews are wiped away. Unfortunately, CIC did not honor the terms of that agreement (surprise surprise), so you get the pleasure of reading this review.
Please be very careful if you are considering Center Island Contracting and do not base your decision on internet reviews as they may be misleading, and you are likely not reading those that have been suppressed. As it happens, at least several reviews of this company are supplied by CIC employees, subcontractors or relatives. The men at CIC may be able to turn on the charm in their first few meetings with you, but in my experience, that level of customer service and respect wanes very quickly once the project begins. Before you make the decision to hire this company please reach out to me as I cannot possibly detail all the frustrations we have had with CIC in one review. If you decide to hire them after reading all this and hearing even more, good luck to you.
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