Working with All Renovations on my kitchen remodel has been an excruciating experience and one that I would not wish on my worst enemy. I would not hire them to work on your project unless you have the time and energy to act as your own project manager, defeating the purpose of hiring a contractor, and have extra cash set aside to deal with price hikes and correcting costly mistakes.
On the plus side, I will say that everyone at All Renovations (Omar, Mir, Thomas, Mel) has been very pleasant and helpful when you can get a hold of them, but the problem is that they are frequently uncommunicative and are not adept at solving problems.
First, let me address the timeline of my project. I was assured that my small kitchen was a "two week job." From the time that I received permission from the condo association until now, as we're negotiating the final punch list, 15 months have elapsed. So, my kitchen probably was a two week job, but those work days were spread over a ridiculous period of time.
Getting permission from the condo association took a significant period of time (although All Renovations helpfully encouraged me to do the work without having it approved first, which I was unwilling to do). During this process, the condo association required me to get a new estimate, knowing that the scope of the work had changed somewhat. After asking to have an additional, 5ft., non-load bearing wall removed, All Renovations' estimate increased by 54%. At this point, however, I was stuck and would lose my deposit if I chose not to accept the new terms. In retrospect, I wish I had written off the loss and chosen a new contractor.
I had a very difficult time getting All Renovations to work on this project in a timely manner. I got the impression that they were doing too many other jobs to care about mine. At various points in this project, more than three months have elapsed with no contact or update from All Renovations (and four months between instances of work being done). I didn't have a kitchen sink and running water for more than three months at one point and decided to simply pay extra for the counter top installers to bring a plumber, so my sink could be hooked up that day. I knew that if I waited for All Renovations to take care of the plumbing, as was included in the scope of the work they were doing for me, I could be left without running water for another three months.
During the course of the project, we ran into several problems. First, we could not use the IKEA cabinets that I'd already purchased and the guys were incredibly helpful in helping me return them. Then, a wall could not be totally removed because of the utility pipes that go to the upstairs condo. All Renovations did not offer any creative solutions to this problem, although they did agree that the solution an architect friend of my proposed was a good one (build an island around it). However, this was yet another example of me needing to be my own project manager, rather than being able to rely on the one that I was paying to handle the renovation.
It was a regular occurrence that work would be done without any advance warning (less of a problem when contractors are doing their work on a daily basis, but more of a surprise when they show up every few months). For example, I had no advance warning that they were going to do final demolition on my existing kitchen in January. I had a few dirty dishes in the sink that they helpfully herded into a box for me and I ultimately had to take to a friends' house to wash. Recently, they showed up again with no advance warning, while I had house guests, who were really upset that a stranger had been in the house without first giving me a heads up.
Finally, I would not put faith in All Renovations' attention to detail, although I'm glad this was not a problem for others. For example, because of a miscommunication between All Renovations and their designer, I ended up with a sink that was not centered, but on the extreme left of the sink "cut out" in the upper cabinets. This mistake forced me to choose between spending an extra $1,000 on new upper cabinets or living with an asymmetrical design that would have been maddening (I chose to spend the money). More recently, I was told that the work was completed and that I needed to pay my remaining balance, despite the fact that there was a hole in the ceiling from where a light fixture was moved; outlet covers were not reinstalled after some additional electrical work was completed; my range still sticks out from the wall because of a mislocated outlet; and the person who installed the crown molding did not use any filler, so it looks like they've been attacked by termites. This has been a constant theme of the entire renovation: the team at All Renovations has relied on me, someone with no construction experience, to make punch lists and tell them what is outstanding on the project, rather than the other way around. read more