Matt and his team did a good job on our kitchen remodel and new floors.
The process was fast, organized, and everything looks beautiful.
When you do a major remodel like this, there's always something that's not perfect depending on how picky you are; and HGTV doesn't show you that stuff.
With our remodel, there were some issues with communication on both sides.
Ziebart Construction was not the cheapest quote we got either, but we liked Matt and we felt comfortable him.
Moving on to the actual remodel, we were not happy with the layout of the semi-custom cabinets we bought. The CAD drawings we got were 2-D and we couldn't really "see" how the cabs would look installed. We had to pay extra to replace & modify some of them.
In the end, we wound up paying about the same price as full custom cabinets (+ $1000.00 more). In hind sight, we wish we had bought the computer virtual tour and gone with the full custom cabs at the start.
The quality of the semi-custom & full custom/modified cabinets we bought were very good.
To be fair, Matt was being careful in our initial interview as our budget was fixed. An extra $500 for the virtual tour would have put us over budget as his quote for the work was already at our max.
He did allow us to go over budget later on when we asked and with very reasonable terms so we could get the fixes & extras that we wanted.
Next, we wish we would have made a different choice on the quartz counters.
We love the counters we got, but there wasn't enough material left over to get a bigger island or a matching piece of stone for the window ledge without buying another entire slab of quartz ($4000.00). We weren't told this till the stone was cut so it was too late to research something else.
We bought beautiful vinyl floors (floating, click lock style), and had Ziebart Construction install them for us.
This type of flooring could not be installed without plastic transition strips between every door way in the house. When you step on those plastic strips, they make a slight crunch sound. It's hard to fault Matt's guys for this one as we researched & bought the flooring ourselves. The store we bought it from didn't really make it clear that we had to have transition strips; only that our installer might want them.
By the time Matt's flooring guy came (just before install), he told us why we needed them. We felt committed at that point because the material was already bought & onsite.
Matt and his trades do good work and the little things we didn't like were addressed quickly. We do recommend Ziebart Construction and intend to use them again later for our bathroom remodels.
From a consumer standpoint:
Be sure to buy the $500 virtual tour if you're getting new cabinets.
Make sure you're prepared before each meeting with your most important questions. They're very busy and you only get so much time with Matt or Rick to go over things.
Some of our meetings felt rushed, but we'll take the blame for that, we asked lots of questions. Communications via cell, and text were responsive.
Study the contracts and be clear about what you want & what you think you're getting before you sign it. Do this via email with Matt before he comes over, he won't have time to make a lot of changes onsite.
Once you sign the contract; your locked in and the work starts quickly.
After we got started, we did LOTS of extra demo, prep, cleanup, purchases, & design decisions hoping to reduce the cost of the project. When the trades came in, they literally had a clean slate to work with.
In the end, the price was the same as quoted (minus the materials we had bought), which was disappointing but it does look beautiful.
Again, be clear on what you're getting, and what you're going to do in terms of purchases, demo, prep, etc. before you sign the contract.
Be sure to keep an eye on the work as you go. The trades people are busy too and they don't read minds. If you don't like something; reach out to Matt or Rick and they'll fix it.
*Note: When the final bill came in, the project did cost less than my math said it should be. I suspect that Matt may have reduced the remaining bill for the fixes/add-ons a little to fit my max monthly payment ability we had talked about earlier.
I think this speaks to the character of who he is and that's another reason why we'll use & recommend Ziebart Construction again despite the hiccups. read more