I started finishing my basement on my own before I started looking for help with the drywall. I received a few quotes, including referrals from family members and other internet look-ups. Matt came out to the house to look at the work that was done, took a lot of measurements and offered suggestions to fix areas which required it. His price was in the ballpark of some of the other quotes I received, but his eagerness and confidence in working with my less-than-perfect framework was encouraging and I quickly signed him on.
The first challenge was getting the drywall downstairs. I struggled with this when considering doing the drywall myself and offered Matt my plan to cut a slot in the floor where the kitchen tile met the living room carpet. This joint was parallel to the floor joists and offered a clean opening to slide up to 12' sheets of drywall directly into the basement. Matt prepped and cut open the area himself and the crew that Matt brought in seemed impressed with the ease of access they had to work with. They were able to bring in over 50 sheets of 12’ sheetrock directly into the basement with ease. Matt had the sub-floor covered up, kitchen cleaned up and carpet re-installed with a couple of hours of making the first cut. He did this work himself, including reinforcing between the joists with 2x4's from the basement so the floor is as solid, if not more, than before and there is absolutely no creaking or flexing.
The next crew that came in to hang the drywall that same afternoon basically had all the sheetrock hung in no more than 2 days. This included measuring, cutting and perfectly installing the unique angled ceiling around/above a bay window in the basement (full-size day light windows). Again, this was an area that I lacked confidence in as far as the framework that I had done to support the drywall. But the guys came through the finished product looks exactly like I had envisioned when I started.
Matt was always present with the crew working the drywall and assisted wherever possible confirming that he wasn't just the sales guy but was willing to get dirty and do quality work himself. He offered good ideas including spray painting markings on the concrete floor to identify locations of wire in the ceiling for pot lights. Once mapped and cut-out, I was able to reach in the right direction for the wire and pull it through with ease. Matt also showed me all of the material used and I was able to confirm with some research that this was all high quality material.
Matt's then spent the extra two days correcting minor flaws and, much like a new home builder, went over any areas that I was unhappy with and corrected each of them. And the final part of the job that impressed me was the cleanup. Matt cleaned up all of the excess compound and sanded material that was created during the job, which allowed the painting work to start with little prep.
Matt's policy on payments was very comforting and he never seemed pushy or grabby to take even the last payment.
Thanks, Matt, for helping bring this thing to life.