We had a full main floor renovation completed by this company in early 2021. We hired them because they were a local company with decent reviews on Houzz. In our initial meeting, they said they are full service, employ their own staff, communicate early and often, are the "good contractors" that treat your home well, maintain a tidy worksite, and finish on time. However, as we have come to realize, this could not be further from the truth.
There is actually very little service provided after you sign a contract with them. We have had to follow up with them every step of the way to ask if they have sourced numerous items for our project. We have had to babysit them every step of the way.
They say they have their own staff and only subcontract out HVAC, plumbing and electrical. However, they leave out that they also subcontract out demolition, flooring, millwork installation, drywall, taping and paint. They actually do very little work themselves. They are extremely inflexible. They will charge you extra for "service calls" - fees to call subcontractors back to complete work when it takes longer than originally estimated, or as a result of changes. They do not budge. Lots of nickel and diming on a project originally invoiced at $200k. When you ask for explanations, you get long, winding, circuitous explanations.
They say they communicate and over-communicate so that you are informed and prepared for each step of the project. That is the exact opposite of our experience. Instead, subcontractors show up randomly and without notice. On the first day after demolition was complete, their only employee assigned to our job showed up and started jackhammering in our basement without any forewarning. Not scheduled. Not communicated. No regard for our personal belongings which were left covered in dust.
They tell you they will assist with all aspects of design. Actually, you will rarely hear from Frankie or Laura when construction is underway. They will be unresponsive to phone calls, neglect to respond to your emails or will get their office assistant to send emails on their behalf, as if they are too busy to communicate with their own customers.
We included a gas fireplace on our wish list which we provided on our first meeting (September 30th). They did not include it in any of the five designs they presented. We had some funds remaining in our budget so we thought it wouldn't be unreasonable to request it be incorporated into the design. We emailed Laura on January 8th regarding it. No response. Emailed again on January 15th, to which Frankie responded that she "cannot design the element because there is a long backorder list on fireplaces" among a bunch of other excuses.
I had already been in touch with my local fireplace dealer and got a sense of their stock situation. I placed the order for the unit of our choice and received it within a couple of weeks. I had their HVAC subcontractor install it. Square Footage didn't hesitate to charge us their design fee on the cost of installation even though, by their own admission, they were unable to design it.
They are excruciatingly slow. At our first meeting on September 30th, we told Frankie we would like our stairs to match the new flooring. The stairs were excluded from the design presented to us on October 20th but they said they "do a ton of stairs". We told them it was a must-have when we signed the construction contract on December 16th. They agreed to treat it as an add-on to the project. We did not receive a quote from them on the stairs until February 5th. When John was on site the following Monday, he said he'll need approval on the stairs soon otherwise it may result in project delays. So basically they took up all the slack in the schedule to come up with a quote and left no time for us to evaluate it. I scrambled and found a specialized stair contractor that would replace the staircase without any design compromises for 25% less than they had quoted to give our existing staircase a facelift - a compromised one at that. It was a no-brainer to replace the whole thing for a lot less and get exactly the design we wanted. However, it stalled our project, and they share no responsibility for it because we chose another contractor for that chunk of the project.
They double-charged us a bunch of times for "extras" and acted like it was accidental. The fact that this company has so many good reviews on Houzz is evidence that either the bar for customer service is very low in this industry or the Houzz reviews are not credible. I tried to submit our own review on Houzz and it was not published. Very suspicious.
How are the results? Well, the kitchen looks fine, I guess. But it is a reminder of the terrible experience dealing with this full-service firm. Hopefully the memory of it will fade with the passage of time but for now it is still tainted by the bitterness of feeling deceived and taken advantage of. read more
