Ambience Designs

We signed the contract in July with a September start/completion date. We were told the job would be no more than four days from start to finish and that we would have a visit from the designer weekly until the job was done. In fact, the job was started in September but not "completed" until April of the following year. We were entertaining a large number of people in our home in October with the expectation that the work would be completed by that time. Instead, we had to INSIST on the installation of a toilet just for that weekend but they neglected to install the door so the toilet was useless. Much of the work was shoddy and the communication between the designer/owner and the carpenter appeared to be nearly nonexistent. Many design features were omitted or changed. Frequent corrections had to be made by us since the designer never showed up and eventually stopped calling or answering phone calls. She also appeared to forget items we had agreed to and further neglected to communicate them to the worker to whom she is married. Important design features such as the size and shape of sink were decided with no consultation and as a result the completed project does not meet our desires. Some features were initially agreed to but since measurements were not made to incorporate these features, they had to be omitted in the end. Workers let themselves into our house without notifying us in advance. Once this happened following over a month absence so that coming home and finding some of their things missing was disconcerting. Since they did not return phone calls, we had to simply assume that they had been there based upon the items taken. Eventually, we gave them one more day to finish whatever they could so that we could get them OUT of our house. Once they were out of the house (I won't say the job was done since it still needs to be finished) we were surprised a month later to receive a bill for an additional $2200. We responded with our own itemization of work not completed, damage made by workers, etc. but have never received a response. Last year we did a great deal of work on our home. We hired this company based upon a positive initial interaction with the "designer" and with the desire to support local businesses. This is the only contractor at the time which we did not hire from Angie's List and we have sorely regretted our decision.