Howie’s Home Improvement

Do not, do NOT, DO NOT contact Howie for your repairs. I hate using all caps, but here it goes — HE IS NOT LICENSED, BONDED OR INSURED AS HE CLAIMS. Yes, that is correct. This guy is a fraud, and you’ll be in as difficult of a situation as I’ve found myself recently if you skip this review.
I hired Howie after a week of searching for a handyman to install a doggie door in my new home. He came out on Oct 29^th to perform the work, and although he was late to the appointment, he was efficient, quick and cheaply priced at $ 55 an hour and no required limit. I’ve had challenges with this from other handymen.
I asked him to provide me with a quote on the basement renovation for my home — doing the floor, walls and electrical for a master bedroom and family room. He quickly agreed, took measurements and told me I’d get a quote. A week went by and I had to follow up — no quote. This was a problem I should not have avoided paying attention to!
Howie contacts me a week later and asks to come over and get more measurements (he must have lost the first copy). He then provides me with a quote after asking for my budget. It’s within it, but pretty high (especially for the quality of work). He doesn’t have carpet or electrical in the quote either, and my budget is pretty set. He pushes me to add windows and trim among other things. I relent and ask him to add it. Again, more warning signs I ignored! He agrees to begin work the next day while I was out of town.
I return a few days later to some work, but not nearly as much as I had expected. He claimed to be working 6 hours a day with him and another person. In reality he worked about 3 hours a day. How do I know? Because the day I was home while they were supposed to be working they put in about 2.5 hours total. In addition, they reeked of weed and made my house smell like pot at one point where I assumed they were smoking. I’m super allergic and sensitive to smoke, so I can tell almost immediately.
I finally fired them after not getting a complete quote 8 days into the project that was supposed to take a week and getting no timeline on when they would finish (at 12 hours a day, it was adding up). They also damaged wall that wasn’t supposed to be touched as Howie «wanted» to do things I didn’t need done. They put in drywall on two walls without installing electrical outlets, although that was the plan. My new contractors had to rip a portion out to install the outlets.
As a final insult to injury after overpaying them FOUR times more than I should have, I found out Howie’s Home Improvement is NOT licensed, bonded or insured and am working with L&I to address this. They are being issued a citation and he is apparently in default. Want to know more — go here:
Run far away from this company. I highly recommend Master Crafters — they have rescued me for this horrific learning experience.

Howie did a wonderful job cleaning and re-​staining our small front and back decks. They look fantastic, and the work was done in a very reasonable amount of time and on budget. I did not think I would find someone in the middle of the summer to take the job, but he kindly fit us in between larger projects. Would definitely hire him again.

This review is based on a large deck staining project for our condo building. The deck looks fantastic! Seriously, I ended up getting 6 bids (Almost 7 — one guy was so unprofessional he came by to do estimates and never got back to us), but we went with Howie’s because of his professional conduct, fair pricing, and he seemed dedicated to doing great work for us — which we did. Everyone in the building is very pleased!