Testimonial 03/03/2013
Dear Bill, I just wanted to express my appreciation for the work you and your team have done for me. I’m delighted with my new home. Every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to bed it occurs to me that I’m as happy as can be to be here, in this house that you and your crew assembled just to please me. And I am pleased; I tell everyone who’ll listen about how GHO built the perfect house just for me. I had no idea what I was in for when first I contemplated having a house built for myself. Thank goodness for Patty Croswell’s gentle hand holding during the contract and construction phases, she’s an extraordinary asset to your team and she proved essential to my managing the stress of so much travel, decision making, and wading through a seemingly endless list of details. I know I wouldn’t have been able to function anywhere nearly as well without her help. Even long after the sale, she continues to be just as supportive and friendly as she was when I first encountered her at one of your open houses. I remember being introduced to Julio Recio briefly early on, but it wasn’t until the frame-walk that I really understood his role. Since then, I’ve seen him show up at the job site and in small minutes solve whatever problem the workers were facing and get everyone on the same page. I expect I have him to thank the most for how quickly and how well the construction went. Months after moving in I’ve only discovered the usual bugs one expects on a large project, nothing significant, and on a job of this size and complexity I find that truly remarkable. In one instance Rita Cleveland, your very responsive and helpful post-construction facilitator, pulled together a team of supplier and service experts including electrical, cabinet, construction, appliance installation, and stone fabricators to reassemble a portion of my kitchen. I watched Julio take charge of this team of 8 men and coordinate their activities so well that they had removed, remodeled, and reassembled the cooking appliances in my kitchen in 90 minutes. Very impressive, and the results are picture perfect. Rita has also been very helpful in a couple of other instances where I had some quibble and she arranged for the necessary talent to come and correct the issue quickly and efficiently. Knowing I can send a note to Rita if I should ever discover something amiss with how my house was built helps me sleep at night, although there really hasn’t been that much I’ve needed help with; Julio builds a nice house. When I do need help, Danny Knowles, wizard-level handyman, has been brilliant. For example, Danny mounted my special-ordered bathroom hardware, towel bars and similar, exactly where I wanted it before the standard hardware had arrived, meaning I didn’t have to remove hardware I didn’t want and then have to patch a hundred anchor holes. He spent an hour and saved me a week of patching and painting. He also did a superb job on a task I had in my attic, much better than I’d expected or even asked for, and he ran each item on my punch list to ground. The man has a true focus on customer satisfaction. As you are aware, and are probably used to, our lender was difficult at the last minute. We all have Debbie Soucie to thank for managing all the paperwork in a timely fashion and for taking the lead on dealing with the bank’s ridiculous requests for repeat deliveries of the same documents, and for helping with their reluctance to accept our standing power of attorney documents. In the end, it took a call from Washington to get the bank to do its job, but without Debbie’s help we wouldn’t have closed and I’d have lost my rate-lock. Good job, Debbie. But if I had to single out just one person that helped me the most, and did the most to ensure that I’d be happy with my new home, it would have to be you. Not a day goes by that I don’t appreciate having all my doors 36” wide, the broad counter expanses in my redesigned kitchen, or my twin double cut glass doors, all there because you helped me with the changes I wanted to one of your basic floor plans. Your suggestions for crown molding, a four color interior scheme, an extra kitchen cabinet/counter section, and the unique front elevation you created just for me really make my house pop; they’re features I admire every single day. And I’d have bought this house just for my studio alone, I love it that much. Your willingness to listen, and then help me with the drawings long before any work was done on the site virtually guaranteed I’d be thrilled with my new home when Julio finished building it. I can’t thank you enough. Sincerely, Allison
