Gikas Painting & Contracting — Attraction in Montclair

Gikas Painting & Contracting is a rare company. I'd even go so far as to call them unusual in this day and age: they combine the highest quality work with the most amazing customer service. I had just returned to my home after living abroad for almost a decade, and a home inspector I hired told me I needed a new roof and a new paint job. I called Gikas -- because I have known the company and their excellent reputation for years. George came right away, and he reassured me that the roof would be good for another 10 to 15 years and the paint job probably another 5 years. (Imagine a company telling you that you DON'T need to hire them right away for major work? I was so relieved I wanted to hug him.) Still I decided to have the front porch painted and the porch ceiling/roof checked out. (For a very fair price.) It was surely a small project for them, but they treated it as if I had asked them to renovate Notre Dame cathedral. Immediately, Alex, the project manager, was on the job looking to set up a start date right away and also coordinating with the Gikas roofing guy (sorry I forgot his name) to investigate an issue with the porch ceiling. (Imagine a company practically nudging you to start the work rather than ghosting you or giving you some vague start date depending on their schedule?) This guy Alex is amazing: organized, efficient, responsive, attentive. (Gikas, you don't pay him enough!) He was on site every day and coordinated well with the paint crew, who were also excellent: highly skilled, tidy, and friendly. Needless to say, I was super pleased with the work they did. A final note about customer service. Alex told me they would return a few days after the job was finished (so the paint on the floor could cure) and put the porch furniture back on the porch. (Honestly, I wasn't sure whether to believe they would really return.) Sure enough, they came back and brought all the porch furniture back onto the porch and arranged everything nicely AFTER I had already paid. (Imagine a company following through after they have been paid in full?) And when I mentioned to Alex in a text a few days after that that an ancient coil spring on the screen door seemed to have been broken, he personally came back to see about it. In sum, if you imagine working with contractors who are honest, professional, excellent at what they do, and peerless in customer service, look no further than Gikas Painting & Contracting. A rare gem of a company. (Final shout-out to Peggy in the office. She, too, is efficient and responsive and answers every question with grace and a great...

Our experience with Gikas was almost a disaster, but it was saved by some maneuvering by Alex, their color specialist and project manager. About a week into a new roof, repairs to the wood siding and painting of the entire exterior of our house, the team assigned to us stopped showing up. I called the office and they were both dismissive and condescending. I called George, who had been my point person and he would wait until the end of the day to call me back, wasting the daylight, and offering empty promises about the next day.

I work from home and have a toddler. With all of the hammering and sanding, nap times got moved to the car and I even planned whole days out of the house to be out of the team's way when they had both interior and exterior work planned for the day. You can imagine my frustration when I would get home from one of these days and find that ZERO work had been done and I would have to come up with new stuff for us to do the next day, assuming the team would show up.

After four days of this, I spotted Alex in his Gikas car down the block from our home. I drove up to him in and knocked on his window and demanded that he fix the situation, as the office and George had been consistently dismissing my concerns. I think a lesser man would have run, but Alex obligingly came to the house to problem-solve. He made sure that he had a full understanding of the repairs to the exterior, patching and spackling of the interior and painting of both that needed to be done.

He pursued the team that was initially assigned to our house and when they flaked (again), he didn't hesitate. He assigned a new team to us, was there to introduce them to our family and translate our vision to the team. He checked in daily and would hold my toddlers hand as we walked around the house to discuss the work being done. This was what I had hoped for in hiring a family-run business to work on our home.

Once Alex was on board, the work was done quickly, efficiently and beautifully. By sheer coincidence, Alex was at the house when I was having new exterior light fixtures installed. He spoke with the electricians (from an entirely different company) and coordinated a time to come back and patch and paint around the new fixtures and ensure that the house looked pristine...this was weeks after the work was done! Alex's attention to detail, commitment to excellence and good humor saved the day. Give Gikas a call...and request Alex as your...

Do NOT use this company! They did not do the job they were hired to complete, left a mess, did not follow direction, and when I complained to the office was not called back and was told the managers responded to my concerns by saying "what do you want us to do about it" Please check Better Business Bureau reviews before hiring them.

I hired Gikas to repair leaking in a bedroom. My husband and I demoed the room down to the studs before they started work. Gikas removed the deck and roof above it and rebuild it entirely, including the exterior wall. When it was "finished" we had a rain storm and there was a leak. Gikas response? "That wasn't from my work, that has been leaking for a long time" But that was why I hired them... to fix the leak! A subcontractor came out on his own time to fix it. Since then, my husband has put the insulation and sheet-rock back up - the beams were not even and made the installation job frustrating. We are still not certain if all leaks have been cared for. It has not rained since.

My property is a multifamily home with a shared driveway and I told them to let me know in advance when they would be working so I could inform tenants (my legal responsibility) - they failed to do so each day they came out (the work took 4-5 days). They put the dumpster in my neighbors driveway (not my shared driveway) after I instructed them to place it in the yard. There was construction debris and workers garbage (empty bottles, napkins, etc.) all over my yard and both neighbors. When they did the gutter work they were blocking the driveway and when I asked them to move the van I was told "No". "What do you mean 'no'?" I replied. "I am just a worker, you will have to talk to my boss" he said. Unreal. I called to complain. After that, they moved the van and I still had to move materials out of the driveway a few times. The gutters end right at the house and none have extensions on them.

I also had Gikas look at our basement which needs a lot of work. As I do with most purchases, I compare with other sellers - Gikas ignored serious structural support needs for the basement and did not appropriately advise me about the work required. Had I used Gikas for our basement we would end up having serious issues many years later requiring their work to be ripped out so we could start again. As I said before, DO NOT USE...