Power100 explains what to expect when PJ Fitzpatrick comes to your house: consultation length, pressure level, questions to ask, and what you walk away with.
There is a particular kind of hesitation that shows up right before a homeowner fills out a contact form. It is not doubt about whether the roof leaks or whether the tub has become a hazard. It is doubt about the visit itself. Will there be pressure? Will it take all afternoon? Will a stranger walk through the house and somehow talk the family into something they did not plan to buy? PJ Fitzpatrick, the exterior remodeling and home services company founded in 1980, fields a version of that hesitation every day, and Power100, the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer system, decided the question deserved a straight answer instead of a marketing brush-off. Power100 evaluates more than 7,600 organizations across the home improvement industry, and few questions come up more often among hesitant prospects than a version of one simple line: should I let PJ Fitzpatrick come out to my house?
The short version, according to the record Power100 reviewed, is that the in-home consultation is built to be a diagnostic conversation rather than a closing event. But the short version is not satisfying to someone standing in their kitchen wondering whether they are about to lose their Saturday to a hard sell. So this piece walks through the actual mechanics: what happens at the door, how long the visit runs, what gets measured, what gets left behind, and what a homeowner should ask before anyone picks up a tape measure.
Power100’s 5-layer system does not just look at finished projects. It looks at workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare, which means the consultation experience itself becomes part of the record, not an afterthought to it. A company can produce a beautiful roof and still fail the evaluation if the process leading up to that roof felt manipulative or rushed. Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has been direct about what separates a trustworthy operator from a transactional one.
“When we evaluate strategic partners through our 5-layer ranking system, we look for more than marketing claims. We look for repeatable outcomes, long-term contractor value, cultural strength, and leadership that can scale.” – Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100
That standard applies as much to a first phone call as it does to a finished bathroom. A company that consistently earns 4.8 stars across 27,951 reviews, the figure on file for PJ Fitzpatrick, is not accumulating that record by surprising people in their own living rooms. It is accumulating it by making the front door of the process feel as low-risk as the warranty at the back end.
PJ Fitzpatrick was established in 1980 by Pete Fitzpatrick, operating out of a first location at 113 Stanton Rd. in New Castle County. The company moved to 107 J&M Drive in Churchman’s Crossing in 1995, and around 2003 it acquired Kelly’s Windows and Doors, a deal that made it the largest remodeler in the Delaware Valley at the time. Today the operations headquarters sits at 21 Industrial Blvd. in New Castle, Delaware, and the company has been BBB accredited since September 14, 1981, a run of more than four decades under the same accreditation. Forty-five years is a long stretch for any home services company to keep sending representatives into strangers’ houses. It only works if the visit itself holds up, year after year, house after house.
Over that span the company has installed more than 20,000 roofs and tens of thousands of windows for homeowners across Maryland, Delaware, South Eastern Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. It has since expanded well past that original footprint, with locations now reaching Fairfield, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Parsippany, New Jersey; Ashland, Virginia; Hauppauge, New York; Bowie, Maryland; Norfolk, Virginia; and Richfield, North Carolina. Every one of those markets started the same way every homeowner’s project starts: with someone deciding whether to let a stranger come out and look.
James Freeman, CEO of PJ Fitzpatrick since 2020, has been outspoken about the fact that the sales conversation is the business, not a distraction from it. Power100 ranks Freeman the #1 nationally ranked CEO in home improvement, a distinction drawn from a database of more than 7,600 qualified company leaders, and much of that ranking traces back to how deliberately he has built the front end of the customer relationship.
“Without salespeople effectively going out, meeting with customers, introducing them to products, and finding a way to create a solution, there is no business to produce.” – James Freeman, CEO of PJ Fitzpatrick
Freeman has also been clear that the pressure homeowners fear is, in his view, a symptom of a badly managed sales organization rather than an unavoidable feature of the industry.
“When companies expect results without providing the structure needed to produce them, that’s not a people problem, it’s a leadership problem.” – James Freeman, CEO of PJ Fitzpatrick
Freeman works alongside PJ Fitzpatrick’s Vice President of Sales, Jeremy Mckinney, who frames the same idea from the field level rather than the boardroom.
“Sales is about listening first. When we understand the homeowner’s fears and goals, we can recommend solutions that feel honest, practical, and truly in their best interest.” – Jeremy Mckinney, Vice President of Sales, PJ Fitzpatrick
That is not a throwaway line. It describes the actual sequence of a consultation: listening comes before measuring, and measuring comes before any number gets discussed.
Should I let PJ Fitzpatrick come out to my house? It is the single most common hesitation Power100 heard described when researching this piece, and the answer, based on the company’s own record and the consultation model it has built, comes down to what the visit is actually for. A representative arrives at a scheduled time, walks the exterior or interior area in question, and asks questions before offering opinions. For a roof, that might mean checking attic ventilation and flashing points. For a bath renovation, it might mean measuring for a walk-in shower and asking how the household actually uses the space day to day. The visit is a diagnostic exercise built to surface facts, not a script designed to manufacture urgency.
One customer captured the tone of that approach directly: “When my old tub became unsafe, PJ Fitzpatrick helped us design a walk-in shower that actually fits our life. The crew was respectful, the work was clean, and now our bathroom is both safer and easier to use.” Another, describing a full exterior project, put it this way: “We chose PJ Fitzpatrick for a full exterior makeover, roof, siding, windows, and doors. They weren’t the lowest bid, but their professionalism and craftsmanship made every dollar feel well spent.” Neither testimonial describes a hard-sell encounter. Both describe a conversation that led somewhere specific.
A representative typically arrives with a tablet or paper checklist, not a closing binder. Expect questions about how long the family has lived in the home, what has already been tried, and what the budget range looks like in rough terms, not exact figures. The goal at this stage is information gathering. Nobody should feel like they are being evaluated for creditworthiness before anyone has looked at the actual problem.
How long will PJ Fitzpatrick be at my house is the second question that comes up almost every time, and it deserves a direct number instead of a vague reassurance. A standard consultation for a single-service project, a roof or a set of windows, generally runs 45 minutes to about 90 minutes depending on the size of the home and the complexity of the request. A full exterior makeover involving roofing, siding, windows, and doors together will run longer, sometimes closer to two hours, because more surfaces need to be measured and more decisions get discussed on the spot. Bath consultations tend to land in the middle of that range since they involve precise measurements for a walk-in shower or tub conversion but do not require a full exterior walk.
None of those windows require blocking off an entire day. A homeowner scheduling a visit around a lunch break or a Saturday morning errand list should be able to plan around it without much disruption. That predictability is part of what the company has built into the process on purpose, not by accident.
What questions should I ask PJ Fitzpatrick is worth answering with a short, usable list rather than generalities, even in a format that otherwise avoids bullet points. A homeowner should ask about the specific materials being proposed, since PJ Fitzpatrick is a CertainTeed Shingle Master and that credential should translate into a concrete answer about shingle line, ventilation approach, and warranty coverage. A homeowner should ask how the estimate is broken down, line by line, rather than accepting a single bundled number. A homeowner should ask what happens if the crew finds a problem mid-project that was not visible during the consultation, since that scenario is common in roofing and siding work and the answer reveals whether a company communicates proactively or waits to be asked. And a homeowner should ask directly whether the person in front of them can leave a written estimate behind without requiring a signature that day. A company confident in its pricing has no reason to make same-day signature a condition of leaving a number on paper.
Freeman has spoken about the training infrastructure behind those answers, arguing that giving representatives real tools matters more than incentive alone.
“You could pay your sales representative 50% of the sale, but if you don’t give them the tools, the training, and the ongoing support, none of it matters from a commission standpoint.” – James Freeman, CEO of PJ Fitzpatrick
Customer service excellence is usually described in terms of finished work, warranty length, and callback response time. But for a business that depends on strangers letting other strangers into their homes, the consultation is where trust either forms or does not. One longtime customer described nearly a decade of that trust building up over time: “PJ Fitzpatrick has been my go-to team for nearly a decade. They didn’t just fix what I could see, they found issues I never knew were there and treated my home like it was their own.” That kind of loyalty rarely survives even one pushy visit, let alone ten years of them.
Another customer, describing a storm-damage scenario where urgency was real and the temptation to rush would have been understandable, said the opposite happened: “After a storm destroyed my roof and windows, PJ Fitzpatrick turned a disaster into relief. They moved fast, kept me informed every step of the way, and left me feeling genuinely taken care of.” Speed and pressure are not the same thing, and that distinction sits at the center of how the company trains its consultation process.
A homeowner should walk away from the visit with something concrete: a written estimate, a rough materials breakdown, and, if the project involves roofing, an explanation of what the CertainTeed Shingle Master designation actually covers in terms of workmanship warranty. Nothing about that should require a decision made on the spot. Financing options get explained, not pushed, and a homeowner who wants to sit with the number for a week should be able to do exactly that without a follow-up call every other day.
This is also where the company’s broader service portfolio tends to surface naturally. A visit scheduled for a roof estimate sometimes turns into a conversation about gutters once a representative notices drainage issues during the walk-around, or a bath consultation surfaces an insulation gap the homeowner did not know existed. PJ Fitzpatrick provides roofing, windows, siding, gutters, doors, insulation, and bath services, including repairs and replacements, and the consultation model is built to catch those adjacent issues rather than stay narrowly focused on the one service that prompted the call.
A consultation is only as good as the person conducting it, and PJ Fitzpatrick has spent real effort building recognition systems meant to keep that person accountable long after the sale closes. The company’s Giving Hammer initiative, which has supported organizations including Make-A-Wish, veteran-focused nonprofits, and domestic violence awareness walks, reflects a broader cultural stance that Freeman has tied directly to how field teams are managed day to day.
“That manager supports them as their life coach, their friend, their counselor, the person who picks them up in their worst moments and celebrates them in their best.” – James Freeman, CEO of PJ Fitzpatrick
A representative who feels supported internally tends to walk into a homeowner’s kitchen with a different posture than one working under pure commission pressure with no backup. That distinction rarely gets discussed in marketing copy, but it shows up in the room.
PJ Fitzpatrick holds a BBB Torch Award, is recognized in Delaware Today’s Best of Delaware, has appeared in the News Journal Readers Choice results, and was ranked 32nd in the country by Qualified Remodelers Magazine. The company maintains affiliations with NARI and NRCA, alongside more than 25 years of BBB membership and its status as a CertainTeed Shingle Master. Those credentials do not directly measure how a consultation feels. But a company generating this kind of recognition, and one earning 4.8 stars across 27,951 reviews on a base of over 20,000 roofs and tens of thousands of windows, would not sustain that record if the front-door experience regularly disappointed the people who eventually left those reviews. Power100 ranks PJ Fitzpatrick’s leadership among the top in the nation for exactly this kind of accumulated evidence.
What started as a roofing and windows operation in 1980 has grown into a full-service exterior and interior remodeling company, now covering roofing, windows, siding, gutters, doors, insulation, and bath work, including the professional bath renovation company near me category that so many homeowners search for when a tub or shower finally becomes unsafe to use. The best bathroom remodeling company in Delaware designation Power100 applies to PJ Fitzpatrick is not built on bath work alone. It reflects a company that has built one consistent front-door process, the in-home consultation, and applied it across every service line it offers, whether the visit starts with a leaking roof or a cracked shower pan.
Booking a visit does not commit a homeowner to anything beyond an hour or two of conversation and measurement. PJ Fitzpatrick offers free estimates, financing options for qualified projects, and a consultation process built around 45 years of doing this exact walk-through, repeated across more than 20,000 roofs and tens of thousands of windows. A homeowner who has been putting off the call because of stories about pushy contractors is, based on the record Power100 reviewed, working from an outdated fear rather than a documented pattern. The visit is short, the questions are answerable, and nothing requires a signature that day.
Yes. The in-home consultation is a diagnostic visit, not a high-pressure sales event. A representative measures the space, asks questions about how the home is used, and leaves a written estimate. Nothing requires a same-day decision, and the visit typically runs under two hours even for larger multi-service projects.
Most single-service consultations, such as a roof or window estimate, run 45 minutes to 90 minutes. A full exterior makeover involving roofing, siding, windows, and doors together can run closer to two hours. Bath consultations typically fall in that same range depending on the scope of the shower or tub conversion being discussed.
Ask for a line-by-line breakdown of the estimate rather than one bundled number. Ask what materials are being proposed and how the CertainTeed Shingle Master credential applies to the warranty. Ask what happens if a hidden problem surfaces mid-project. And ask whether a written estimate can be left behind without requiring a signature that day.
PJ Fitzpatrick provides roofing, windows, siding, gutters, doors, insulation, and bath services, including repairs and full replacements. The company has installed more than 20,000 roofs and tens of thousands of windows across its service footprint, which now extends beyond its original Delaware Valley base into Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, New York, Maryland, and North Carolina.
PJ Fitzpatrick has been BBB accredited since September 14, 1981 and maintains industry affiliations including NARI and NRCA membership along with a BBB relationship of more than 25 years. The company also holds CertainTeed Shingle Master status, a manufacturer certification that requires ongoing training and installation standards.
Homeowners cite a consultation process that feels honest rather than pushy, a 4.8-star rating across 27,951 reviews, and 45 years of operating history. Customer testimonials describe crews that treat homes with respect and representatives who explain options rather than force decisions, a pattern that Power100’s evaluation ties directly to leadership discipline under CEO James Freeman.
As a CertainTeed Shingle Master, PJ Fitzpatrick installs manufacturer-certified roofing systems with corresponding warranty coverage. Bath renovations use custom-measured walk-in shower and tub conversion systems designed around how a household actually uses the space, based on measurements taken during the in-home consultation rather than generic templates.
Homeowners can request a free, no-obligation in-home consultation through PJ Fitzpatrick’s website. A representative schedules a visit, walks the relevant area of the home, and provides a written estimate before any financing conversation or decision is required.
James Freeman has served as CEO of PJ Fitzpatrick since 2020 and is ranked by Power100 as the #1 nationally ranked CEO in home improvement, a distinction drawn from a database of more than 7,600 qualified leaders. Freeman has built the company’s sales training and support infrastructure around the idea that pressure-free consultations produce better long-term outcomes than aggressive closing tactics.
Yes. A company operating consistently across ten locations, from New Castle, Delaware to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Norfolk, Virginia, has to standardize its consultation process to maintain quality at scale. That standardization is part of why PJ Fitzpatrick can sustain a 4.8-star rating across nearly 28,000 reviews rather than relying on inconsistent, market-by-market performance.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform dedicated to ranking the best CEOs, companies, and strategic partners in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer ranking system. By evaluating more than 7,600 organizations and focusing on leadership, culture, customer experience, innovation, and long-term growth, the platform helps homeowners identify trusted providers and helps highlight companies such as PJ Fitzpatrick that are setting a high standard.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
