My summary assessment of April Interiors (AI) and her husband's contractor business, "From the Ground Up" (FTGU) is unprofessional, low quality, poor communication and questionable billing practices. I feel the need to add to my wife's previous review of our experience. Admittedly, this was my first time working with an interior designer, but I have worked with many contractors. We decided to use AI for some design elements in our new home because we wanted someone to take ownership of the project from start to finish and deal with problems as they arose, as they always do in construction projects. During her consultation, April assured my wife that she would oversee the project and hold subcontractors accountable for mistakes. Unfortunately, our experience has been quite contrary to our goal.
Firstly, we were unaware that AI was subcontracting a majority of the work to her husband, we foolishly assumed that she would seek out and hire industry experts for each project, rather than just hire her husband's "remodeling and handy-man" company, especially because we thought we were paying her hourly design rate to serve as our general contractor. We had multiple issues with FTGU from the beginning, primarily with the quality of their work, the details of which would make for a much longer post. We often found ourselves having to communicate with AI to arrange for FTGU to correct mistakes, rather than April ensuring the quality as promised. Suffice to say that there was not a single aspect of their work that went right the first time, and many aspects of their "finished" work are still unsatisfactory. More importantly, we found out later that we were being invoiced for every communication between us and April, as well as April and FTGU, regarding these issues, even regarding the instances when both AI and FTGU would acknowledge that the quality was unacceptable. We only became aware of the relationship between the two businesses when her husband reached out to us directly to apologize for a mistake they had made, and we realized they had the same last name. When we voiced our concern about the conflict of interest and requested that we not pay her for time spent to coordinate repairing their mistakes, she responded by demanding that we pay the remaining balance for the entirety of the project or she would not deliver the goods and furnishings we had already paid for, even though the agreement was that we would pay for all materials and half of labor up front, and the remainder of each project as it was completed. After discussing our options with an attorney, we felt we had no choice but to allow them to finish so that we might move on.
This demand for early additional payment of over $17,000 came even though we had provided AI with a check for nearly $25000 to get work started and had paid all of our design invoices promptly. There was several months delay between the initial payment and any work starting, and sometimes weeks without updates. Communication was consistently poor, and primarily through emails that were often devoid of needed details but full of condescending generalities. We were repeatedly made to feel that our concerns were unwarranted and told that the issues were the result of us being overzealous in identifying mistakes early. If we wanted to actually speak with her by phone, we would have to arrange for a phone meeting in the middle of the work day, many days in advance. Our last invoice included a line for "harassing calls" because I tried to reach her at her office and by cell phone to discuss an urgent issue but she did not answer.
AI also refused to honor the initial bid to paint/repaint the walls that they had already worked on (in four separate rooms of our home), even though we insisted that they complete the work. When we solicited bids from other painters, they either refused the job, because the decorative fretwork on the wall should have been painted prior to installation (a concern we had brought up to AI in the beginning), or their bids were 5 times higher than the original bid for the same reason. I believe that April Interiors declined to honor the agreement because they realized they had underbid the paintwork and took advantage of our dissatisfaction to get out of it.
To add insult to injury, April would only agree to finish the other projects if we were not in our home when FTGU was working, and when they installed some new lighting fixtures on the accent wall, they damaged the finish. This issue happened not once, but three times. Rather than take responsibility and notify us, they tried to cover it up with black paint. When we brought it to April's attention, she came to our house, when we were not allowed to be, to inspect. She agreed that it was not acceptable, but while she was at our house, she directed FTGU to sand down the caulking on the joints of the decorative wall work, after it had clearly been newly painted by our painters! She invoiced us for he read more
