I would like to say good things about Benavides Furniture Restoration, but it fell short of my…read moreexpectations. Mr. Benavides is a well-spoken man who presents well. He also picks up and delivers furniture, which is a plus. His skills and follow-through however aren't, in my opinion, where they should be.
Experience #1: I initially hired Mr. Benavides to repaint my old kitchen cabinets. He painted the cabinet boxes and removed the doors to paint them at his shop. His 70+ year old father returned with my doors to complete the job. (I didn't hire the father.) Unfortunately, the father spoke no English and could not install the doors properly. Without asking me, Mr. Benavides , the son, replaced the old hinges with new hinges that didn't work. The double doors installed with the new hinges had at least a half inch between them and the father didn't know what to do. I spoke with Benavides, the son,and told him I'd hired him to do the job, not his dad. Benavides, the son, returned, purchased different hinges and completed the job. The cabinets turned out okay, but Mr. Benavides also told me he would give me some of the remaining paint for touch up. He never did.
Experience #2: Because I have quite a few pieces of antique furniture that needed to be repaired, I gave Mr. Benavides a second chance. He told me he would charge me $120/hr with a minimum of 4 hours to make some repairs. Separately, I gave him a very small table to refinish to test his refinishing skills.
I watch a lot of furniture refinishing videos but lack the tools and a shop to refinish my own furniture. Whenever a chunk of wood is missing or needs gluing in a piece of furniture, all five of the refinishers I watch glue and clamp the wood into place.
When Mr. Benavides came to repair a chest with a chunk of wood missing, he asked if I had masking tape. I had a brand new roll. Instead of gluing and clamping the loose chunk of wood into place, Mr. Benavides used my tape to hold the wood on. It didn't glue well and left a small gap around the chunk. Also, when Mr. Benavides came back some weeks later with my table, he didn't even bother to check his repair, and he NEVER took the tape off. I did. He also ran off with my roll of tape and didn't return it even when I asked him to bring it back when he came. Why didn't he have his own tape?
As Mr. Benavides slapped on some colorant on a different chest for $120/hr, I tell him I'm waiting on a bid to paint my house, which includes repairing windows. He tells me he has a friend who does this and asks me if the friend can come over to provide another bid. I say "sure". The friend who came was a very nice gentleman, but he didn't speak English. As a consequence, Mr. Benavides translated everything, which lasted maybe 1 to 1-1/2 hrs.. Instead of stopping the clock on his $120/hr., I ended up paying $120./hr for him to translate. I felt taken advantage of.
Experience #3: I gave Mr. Benavides my small table to test his refinishing skills. I asked him to stain it in cherry. The original finish was a little red and I liked it. Mr. Benavides said it might take 2 weeks to complete the job. It took him about five, but that wasn't that much of an issue. What was an issue was that although the legs were stained cherry, the top was stained in a yukky boring brown.--Not cherry as specified. Mr. Benavides also did not glue the crack in the second horizontal surface below the top that kept the legs together. The crack still moves. It shouldn't move. The finish is smooth, but it isn't what I asked for. Did his dad finish this job too?
