Home Explosion in Upper Arlington
Katherine C from Columbus
I live on a street in Upper Arlington where a neighbor’s house exploded from a gas leak. Every house in the neighborhood had extensive damage, including mine. I had 130 cracked bricks on my all brick ranch that needed to be repaired or replaced. Since my house is from 1958, bricks that match are non existent! I only found 3 companies even willing to quote the restoration.
Everyone at Utmost renovations is amazing. They happily quoted one of the most difficult jobs and waited patiently for 2 months while my insurance company got their act together and gave us the funds for the repairs. Their quote ended up being the best, but also gave us options for repair vs replacement of the brick, which scored points with the insurance adjuster for a complete and well rounded quote. The employees are phenomenal. Kind, patient, and willing to explain all our options in detail and give me and my husband the time to figure out what the best course of action is for our situation. In our minds, it was key that any repairs not devalue our home.
We opted to get the majority of the bricks hammer drilled out of the house and replaced with bricks from our front wall which were a perfect age match. They had to remove and clean existing bricks from the wall, and then go about the tedious job of saw-cutting out each individual cracked brick on my house, replacing it and matching the mortar. I was sure that after all the replacement, I would be able to see where every repair was made. I was completely shocked at how well they were able to get the new mortar to match the old mortar, which had a heavily sanded appearance. It looks flawless now!
The employees also were able to work without me being home, which was great. All they required was a water hookup and electrical plug and they got to work. These men wasted no time. When they were here, they were always busy. I never looked out of my house thinking, “Boy I wish they’d get to work!” If they had any problem or ran into something troubling, they immediately approached me to explain what the situation was, and let me make my own decisions regarding when it was better to replace or reface a brick. They ordered limestone caps to replace the top row of bricks they ended up using from my landscaping wall. It looks better than I could have imagined and they even finished up on Labor Day!
I would highly recommend them to anyone needing a real mason for any brick work. The quality of their work is excellent, and the attitude and work ethic of the employees is one of the best we’ve worked with so far on the extensive repairs our house required.
