Proper Plumbing

You must only hire this company for small jobs. While Matt is a pleasant person, he spent HOURS roto-​rooting my system before informing me that he didn’t have the right equipment to clear the problem. I must have spent at least $ 300 more than I would have, on those hours of wasted effort when I should have hired someone who likely could have cleared the problem in an hour or so. He half-​assed cleared it and now, 2 months later, the problem is back full force. LET YOUR CUSTOMERS KNOW WHEN YOU CANNOT DO THE JOB!!!

Mine is an old house, updated over the years by many of its owners, not always with the greatest degree of professionalism. Sometimes this results in fun quirks (the downstairs shower has completely separate piping and handles for the bath and the shower) and sometimes it results in annoyances. I was setting out to fix an annoyance — the upstairs kitchen was recently redone, but they forgot which pipe was which when plumbing it, so the hot water line was hooked up to the cold water tap of the sink, while the cold water branched off to the dishwasher and the hot water tap. I just wanted that corrected, with the hit water leading to the new dishwasher I bought, and that superfluous cold-​water branch switched over to lead to the ice maker of the fridge.
As you may guess with this type of plumbing error, I have had plumbers out to my house before. I used to go through one of the larger companies that had always done right by me, waiving service fees and cutting prices down from the master fee schedule in their binder, and for the most part they did a good job. This time, either they have changed their attitude towards customer service or I just lost a dispatch coin toss, because they sent out the biggest ass-​hat they had. He didn’t show up when he was supposed to, wrote quotes for things I never asked for, and the things I did ask for we’re outrageously priced.
So then I called Matt at Proper Plumbing. He didn’t even have to see the issue to understand what I wanted, and ball-​parked it over the phone, quoting less than half the price of Mr. Hat. When he came out, rather than give me a window of time he might be stopping by in, he gave us a specific hour, and then called to let us know he’d be 15 minutes late because he was in traffic. Once he started working, he did a terrific job, and fixed another smaller issue with the drain while he was down there, and even with the extra work, still came in at below what he had quoted me.
Matt was one of the friendliest, most knowledgable, and most honest plumbers I’ve ever had over. I couldn’t be happier with the work he did, how he did it, or the price he charged me for having it done. I think those other plumbers just permanently lost a customer.

It turns out that if your house is over 100 years old the pipes are a wee bit old. And they are also most likely made out of galvanized steel, which means they corrode, sometimes until there is just a pinhole sized amount of water flowing through them. And when this happens your water pressure goes down the toilet. Ha.
When Nick and I bought our new home we knew that the pipes would have to be replaced right away so we called in a couple of plumbers to give us estimates on cost and time. Matt from Proper Plumbing was by far the most reasonable in cost — quoting us a couple of hundred dollars less than the next closest bidder. And since Nick had worked with him in the past on condo stuff it was a no-​brainer to hire him.
Over the course of two days Matt replaced all of the old, crappy pipes with brand spanking new ones and now our water pressure is so good! Well, it’s regular probably to most people in Colorado, but I no longer have the first world problem of having to take 5 minutes to fill up a Brita pitcher of water. So, that’s pretty excellent.

Ya know what? I suck at most manual labor. I’m just bad at home improvement. So what do I do? I try to remodel my bathroom top to bottom. Yeah, good call Nick.
So I live in this 1960s condo that has those wire mesh/​plaster interior walls that suck. Not only that, but my main bathroom didn’t have a shower head in teh bathtub. Yeah, right? I mean who does that? Anyway, I wanted a shower head in that wall and while I’m comfortable tiling my walls (kinda) I’m by no means comfortable fiddling with pipes and in-​wall plumbing.
So awesome Matt comes over from Proper Plumbing and gives me an extremely reasonable quote that definitely beats the other quotes I gathered out of the water ;). On the scheduled day of, he was here right on time, cut the giant hole in my wire mesh wall to put the pipes in, put nice copper piping in, tested for leaks and was done in 3 hours.
The dude killed it. He’s rad. I’ll call him up anytime I have a problem or need work done on my place. I had the new frame in the wall and covered up his work by the end of the day. Not a bad day’s work.
His plumbing was truly proper.

Plumbing problems are a drag. One minute everything is fine, the next minute your kitchen sink is spewing nastiness onto the floor whenever you turn on the garbage disposal. Then you have to get on the phone and call some sleazy plumber who gives you a heavy dosage of his crack while overcharging you for some bum work. Luckily I happen to know about Proper Plumbing. Matt came over, cranked out the job in two hours and charged a very reasonable price for parts and labor. The best part of the experience was that his pants covered his ass.