I said I wanted solid white oak built-ins and a week before the "completed by date," I'm finding out he wants to upcharge me for the wood and claims that he thought I wanted "alder wood with a white oak color paint." Why on earth would I want that? White oak means white oak... If he would take a minute and stop bragging about his fancy Sherwood jobs, maybe he would get to appointments on time and pay attention to what he's doing. I gave a 50% deposit on Nov 18, 2020 and was guaranteed installation by Jan 15, 2021. I said ok, now realizing he wrote down Jan 15 to Jan 25.. funny how that wasn't mentioned. I finally received the drawings (after asking over and over) and they were wrong. The measurements of our walls and TV were even wrong. The cabinets were missing from my husband's office (I think this is the intentionally planned upcharge that was coming). It doesn't make sense. Why weren't those on there? We discussed in detail. We even talked about the demo and we had it done! Yesterday he acted as if we added that.. what!? I assumed memory issues but now I think it's deliberate and intentional to pretend I added something so he can upcharge. I always said I wanted white oak wood. We spoke at length about how I then want to re-finish or somehow tweak the color of my husband's white oak wood desk so it matches. He told me that wouldn't be a problem, but yesterday it was a problem and he was shocked I wanted white oak wood? He told me he thought I wanted alder wood painted to look like white oak. I absolutely do not! He then tried to get at me aesthetically and said the white oak wouldn't look good because it's too similar to my flooring.. hmm.. well, maybe that's the idea! And if you were going to paint Alder wood to look like white oak, how's it different? I tried to be polite and just said ok, I'll look at the samples of both - Alder and White Oak - and that's how we left things last night. I slept on it and was really upset. I feel like I was totally taken advantage of and lied to, and like he thinks he can just convince us to do something we don't want. I've done that before and I say no this time! We're a young couple doing built-ins in our first home. We were so excited about it and it's taken a few years for us to be ready to make this investment, and we know what we want! It's Jan 9 and we were supposed to have the built-ins in my husband's home office and family room by Jan15, and now I come to find out that we are not even aligned on wood type, let alone the stain. Oh and now he can't make my husbands desk color match the built-ins either way. If we do alder, it's different wood (the desk is solid white oak we designed and had custom made locally) and if it's white oak, now he claims that the desk might have veneer on the sides so he can't stain it. It absolutely does not. So this morning, I respectfully said that I know that we want white oak, not alder. He replied telling me it would be a lot more pricey and that he would call me to discuss. I really didn't want to discuss it. I know what I want. I replied and said "ok then let's just cancel it. I have someone else who can do it." I have 2 other bids that are for white oak and they're not "a lot more pricey." I'm pretty frustrated we wasted all this time. I was shocked to hear that this man will not give us back any of our money. He has $5,500 and has not done any work. We didn't approve materials, color, drawings, etc. This man claims that he's keeping it because he spent time measuring. Isn't that crazy??! That's worth $5,500? What about the fact that he won't meet his completion date? What about the fact that he has not spent a penny on materials yet? How could he have? It's impossible. This man says he has a whole factory and tons of jobs, so why does he need our hard earned money? I'm just shocked. This man was so rude to me. I had my mom listen in. He complained that I was "disrespectful" for not showing up at my parents' house 2 years ago when he came to measure and give an estimate to redo their kitchen. Why would I need to be there? It was my parents house and I was helping them with the design. My mom was there - she's the owner of the house. By the way, the reason I was not there is because I have a full-time job and he is always late and rescheduling. I don't live at my parents house and can't always be there. I had already said - the layout was the same - just new cabinets. He wasted a bunch of my mom's time telling her about his other jobs. We don't care! We care about our projects! That's it! Please think about what you are doing and give us our money back. You did not provide a service and will not. Please do not steal our hard earned money and our joy to make our house our home. read more