In early Summer, 2013, my mother decided to remodel her kitchen. She chose Chip's Custom Creations in Capitola to do her counters. He seemed patient and helpful in the beginning, which was much appreciated as she is a small, 74 year old woman who is not very assertive. The process took much longer than originally anticipated, partially due to the fact that she was diagnosed with cancer during the remodel. At long last, the floors and cabinets were completed and it was time for Chip to come in and put on the "finishing touch". His work was done in a timely fashion and looked great... until the plumber came to install the sink. It took the plumber a very long time to install and looked awful, with a thick bead of silicone around the sink. After several calls to the plumber and several visits from him to resolve the problem, we finally find out that it really wasn't the plumbers fault - the hole for the sink had been cut wrong, preventing it from being installed correctly. We all took turns under the sink, trying to get it to line up right, but there was just no way to do it - there was no place for the sink clips to be installed on one entire side of the sink, which left a large gap that could ONLY be filled with ugly silicone.
Up to this point, Chip had always been responsive and actually nice (even asking how my mother was doing when I went to his shop to pick out the edge style for her). However, when we brought up the error, he denied any mistake, would accept no responsibility or liability for fixing it. As we became more insistent, he became angry and, at one point, furiously CORNERED my mother in her own home and SCREAMED at her relentlessly until she began crying. Fortunately, my sister happened to stop by at that point and ordered him out of her home, telling him to never return. After that, he still continued to call and yell angrily at her over the phone. Finally my sister answered for her and told him to never, ever, ever call our mother again. Can you even imagine how shocked we all were when we found out that he had bullied our tiny, cancer-riddled mother in such a fashion (in addition to denying the error, which we could all plainly see)?
So here we are... Mom's "dream kitchen" is back together, but the possibility of the sink leaking around the edges into the cabinet below is a constant worry that will NEVER go away (of course we can't afford to re-do the whole thing). And each time she enters the kitchen, it is tainted by this worrisome problem and the memories of an abusive contractor who wouldn't stand behind his work.
If you have nothing go wrong, Chip does beautiful work. But if there is a mistake, do NOT expect him to accept responsibility or make any attempt to fix it. And if you insist, prepare for a lot of verbal abuse (whoever yells loudest wins, right?) Based on our experience with him, we will not recommend him to anyone. read more