Professionalism, courtesy, and a positive attitude permeated all of North Star's work, including communication and follow-up. The workers were always on time, carried on intelligent conversations, safely operated the tools and machinery, and truly cared about the quality of the work they were doing. I never heard an unpleasant word from any of them.

As much weight as I give to the quality of the work, I think that the willingness of a contractor to come out and touch up something after the customer pays all the bills and settles back into the house is even more important. This is when their true colors show through — or don't. If I called to have something adjusted or found a problem with work done by a subcontractor, North Star would have someone out right away, even if it was not their own work. They would never say that the issue was no longer their problem. They recognized that it wasn't my problem either and part of what I paid for was the convenience of having someone coordinate my project — one phone call before, during, and after the project. They did not expect me to call the subcontractor to come back out.

We added a large first-floor family room and a bedroom. We remodeled our kitchen, installed a second-floor mini-laundry, added two upstairs bathrooms and remodeled the other, and installed forced-air heating and air conditioning. Needless to say, we moved out for four months during the construction. At the time we did the work, we opted to concentrate our resources on the interior and leave some of the exterior finishing for later. Our plan with North Star allowed us to think long term and do the construction with the future exterior finishing work in mind. I am looking forward to working with North Star once more, and soon, to finish up the outside of our project and achieve the original goal of being unable to distinguish the old from the new. North Star's finish work on the inside definitely integrated the new with the old, and I am confident that the minor finish work on the outside will be equally stunning.