My wife and I hired Kerr Construction to remodel our San Francisco kitchen. The project involved tearing out old wall and ceiling material, some re-ducting, new electrical wiring, new lighting, counter top, light fixtures, floor refinishing, appliance installation and painting. This is a difficult review to write, because many aspects of the project were done well, and the overall look of the finished product is fine.
But Jeff Kerr showed such poor judgment at the end of the project in cavalierly rejecting a serious complaint, that I have to warn off potential clients from this firm.
His painters finished their work while we were away. We continued to be away for many days later. We received an emergency call from an upstairs neighbor, saying that a drain that runs only from our unit, was discharging muck into a neghbor's property. We hired Teevan, a firm that has worked for years on our house, to clean out the drain. The cost to me was $3,800, not a small amount given our total project cost of around $50,000. Teevan found and photographed clumped up blue and white latex paint. These were the colors used by Kerr's painter. The occurrence of this emergency was within a couple of days after the departure of the painter.
I emailed Jeff Kerr, and said that 1. I didn't need compensation for the emergency repair, but 2. That I recommended he stop using the painting contractor. Clearly these folks dumped the paint residue down the drain. I thought that I was being quite generous with Jeff. I felt it was appropriate to do this because we had developed something of a social relationship. What a mistake on my part. After not getting back to me for over two weeks, I reminded him of my complaint. He said he had been busy, and then said that the report showed there was brown paint in the residue and that they didn't use brown paint.
So, I am left with the conclusion that Jeff Kerr is tone deaf, has almost no sense of how to come part way towards a customer, and in fact, has shown to me that he is "just another shoddy contractor." Potential clients can do better. read more