MINAVE GRANITOS/CABINET BR INC

This company is two guys working together, Tony and Henri. Tony specializes in the granite part and the cabinets (design and installation) themselves, Henri acts as subcontractor for carpentry, electrical, plumbing, etc. The granite countertop and island are beautiful (the seam is all but invisible), and the installation of cooktop/vent was excellent. That was the part that Tony did. Everything that Henri was responsible for seemed to be sloppily done (sink leaked, patching/texturizing around original bar area, etc.) and take forever. We started off in July with "hurry up, buy the granite, give us the down payment, our cabinet guy is ready to go". Then 2 months later we're pestering them as to what was the hold-up; they hadn't even started. We also paid 'top dollar' for the island cabinetry to be built and ended up with NO shelves. Their response to our complaint was to cut pieces of plywood for the shelving. We finally did get them to install shelving, but ended up with unfinished edges....in our 'quality custom-designed' island!
- Countertop price was very good. Island price was very high, especially considering we were using doors they had from a previous job.- Originally planned to have them do the laundry room as well; however, kitchen job started in July, and by end of October we were ready to be done with them (four months to replace an island and ~100 sq ft of countertop?)- Original subcontractor they were using for kitchen cabinet skipped town--not their fault, but early indicator of how the job was going to go- Sink leaked BADLY after it was hooked up--I mean, you didn't even turn on the water to test it when it was done!?- Destroyed brackets that attach dishwasher to countertop when removing old countertops--didn't bother to unscrew them from counter, just ripped them off. Now dishwasher can't be anchored and moves every time you open/close it.- Filling and texturing of walls where countertops meet wall, outlets were relocated, etc., looked terrible. We wound up redoing it ourselves. - Never returned to put additional holes in granite for soap dispenser/hot water dispenser; we should have refused to give them their final payment until it was done. We finally just paid someone else to come and do it.
Additionally, the price for the laundry room work kept changing, even though we had a written estimate; the agreement was, if we went with them for the kitchen, they would give us a deal on the laundry room remodel if we worked with cabinets they had left over from another job. Suddenly every little change was an excuse to throw the whole estimate out--for instance, ONE extra 2' cut on a piece of granite for the laundry room boosted the price by $300; changing from two small cabinets to one larger cabinet (still using the stock they had on hand, and were trying to get rid of) was an excuse to charge a couple of hundred extra. This ended up increasing our $1300 'laundry room deal' to a $2200 estimate, and Henri wanted a $1500 deposit....something else we ended up doing ourselves.
We went with them because they were local to where we lived at the time and our mechanic gave Tony a good recommendation, but next time, if you're not rated in Angie's List, forget it.