Kitchen + Bathroom Arts Inc/Design Home Deluxe

1) What was installed was not was discussed. The design was not practical. Space was lost from the closet due to the design. The potential was there, but it appeared that they installed what they had in stock - not what we discussed. 2) It is one year and yet not completed. Although 2 meetings were agreed upon, the owner was a no-show. We had to steal some product and finish things ourselves. 3) The workmanship is shoddy - cracked marble, fixtures put in at an angle. The toilet wasn't fixed. The walk-in closet needed to be ripped out. There were cracks in the wood made on installation. The grout was not sealed and poorly applied. Workmen arrived intending to do what we had not agreed upon. 4) I received constant begging for the money. A series of emails to all clients were sent promising to finish projects once new projects were signed up for - implying that there was no money to complete projects at this time. Other clients were behind ours. 5) We had to hire other contractors to finish the project.

We met once at my house and once at his showroom to discuss doing a kitchen redesign. He was prompt and professional, but he was very pushy and not very responsive to what I was looking for regarding my kitchen. In the end, the last time we spoke on the phone, I told him that we would be using someone else. He asked why and I felt like I should be honest and let him know that there 3 reports filed against him that remained on his better business bureau report. He told me that they must be false and that he would look into them. I politely thanked him for his time and consideration of my project and I thought that was it. Instead, he called me 2 or 3 more times. I did not answer my phone and he left me voicemail messages going on and on about how the better business bureau reports were untrue and that he had everything cleared up, etc. I found these emails unsettling and was glad when he figured out I was not going to use him and stopped calling me. My advice is to stay away!

K+B+A Kitchen and Bathrooms Arts is located on the second floor of Lake Point Tower. He has done over 10 units in the building. I signed a contract on October 8, 2008 with a $85,000 deposit for a complete remodel of my unit. He was suppose to begin work in December 2008. No work has ever been started. He has refused to refund my deposit. The City of Chicago, Brian White contacted me in February to tell me this guy does not have a contractors license. No work can be done to my unit. I have to hire another Contractor and have lost my deposit. This guy needs to be stopped. He has my unit and another unit in the building and another unit. All have lost their money.Don't use this company. or Deyan Vuksanovic.

Anne Hyman is 83 years old, diabetic & has a heart condition. She hired Deyan Wolfson, owner of KITCHEN AND BATH ARTS to re-model her kitchen. At his request, she paid a deposit in July 2007 & signed the first contract in August, 2007. We stopped trying to work with him in April, 2008 nine months after my mother gave him the deposit. She had been left without a kitchen for five months. They tore the kitchen out, disposed of all the appliances except for the refrigerator, put only partial cabinets in & disappeared. She could hardly walk or get around, has a heart condition & had been washing her dishes in the bathroom sink for five months. She had no stove, no microwave & her refrigerator was in the living room. When the new cabinets arrived (four months after the contract was signed), Deyan Wolfson, put the large boxes in the living room. He had her empty her entire kitchen & put her food, dishes, pots, pans, etc. in boxes. They were put in her living room, along with the very large cabinet boxes. The boxes took up her entire living room you couldn t walk in the living room or find anything from what used to be her kitchen. It stayed that way for months before the new cabinets were installed in January. When the cabinet boxes were opened, it was revealed that Mr. Wolfson completely measured the kitchen wrong, so he needed to re-order new cabinets (which he did not), some had to be manually cut down and others couldn't be used at all! In addition, they were not the color or design that my mother ordered & contracted items were not even ordered. Unfortunately, she had no choice but to accept them and the initial cabinets were finally installed at the beginning of January, 2008. Eight months after the original contract was signed, what used to be Anne s kitchen was only incomplete cabinets (the bottom cabinets were not even secured) and electric outlets hanging from the sockets. The kitchen had no lights, countertops, sink or appliances. There were large gaps in the cabinets where new ones needed to be purchased & there were three brand new cabinets (that she paid for) that could not be used. The family spent hours and hours dealing with Mr. Wolfson, to no avail. Every promise he made was broken, every word - a lie. When he started asking for more money than initially contracted & we discovered that he had lied about the new cabinets & countertops being ordered (& that he owed money to his workers and vendors for the kitchen) we decided to find a new contractor to finish her kitchen. The new contractor discovered many problems that they had to correct, at additional cost to my mother including electrical work related to installing a light switch outside the kitchen because they had buried the one in the kitchen, repairing & staining the wood floors they damaged, trying to compensate for the incorrect installation of a fuse box, repairing their electrical work, & she had to put for more cabinets!

TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE!! Work began 6/26/07. Over the next 7 months, K & B Arts crew worked fewer than 3 months! After an initial flurry of activity in July, the work was very sporadic (from August through January, total time worked was less than 2 months) Much later, I discovered there was no money for materials, suppliers hadn't been paid, crew hadn't been paid for weeks, etc. By January, 2008 not a single room was completed. For example, only 1 of the living room bookcases had been installed, less than 1/2 of the office built-in cabinets and bookcases had been installed, powder room sink and cabinet were missing, shelving/accessories in the kitchen cabinets was missing, the Wolf range was installed with incorrect accessories, no handles on any of the bathroom cabinets, no handles on any of the living room or office cabinets, no light fixtures in any of the 3.5 bathrooms or on 3 stairwells, recessed lighting throughout the house is too small for the ceiling height (6" canisters should have been installed instead of 4" ones) now, all rooms are too dark and the lighting is insufficient. All of the missing items (that had been paid for) are too numerous to list! Wolfson has no/limited design skills; he's unable to follow a detailed design and blueprint for the office that had been put together by a certified professional. His designs were full of problems, impractical, and didn't take into account the client's specified request. KBA's design decisions were, to put it kindly, incompetent. For example, Wolfson hadn't planned on putting up a door for the master bathroom until I demanded one (a pocket door should have been installed but instead Wolfson put up a door that hits you whenever it's opened/closed and you're standing at the sink), the frameless shower door hits the toilet every time it's opened or closed, the master shower bench is crudely designed and tiled, wrong tiles were used in another bathroom (they were decorative only and not meant for a shower), expensive glass tiles were ruined upon installation, etc. Again, the mistakes/bad design decisions are too numerous to list! Wolfson is extremely unorganized and always played catch-up with the project. The work was never properly scheduled or planned (which translated into a lot of mistakes). This man is very lazy and unethical. I have many instances of unauthorized substitution of products (for example, he regularly tried to sneak in local department store house brands instead of the Grohe and Kohler products specified in the contract, cheap cabinets made of particleboard instead of oak). He only showed up when he wanted $ (no exaggeration); he gave our project minimum guidance and attention. We paid for numerous items that were either never delivered or were of inferior quality and not what was specified in contract. Quite simply, this man lied, cheated, and stole from us. Don't be fooled by his Sunday Chicago Tribune ads. My advice is DO NOT USE KITCHEN & BATHROOM ARTS, INC.

1st demolition 2/26/07. Estimated completion 4 wks for both baths. I planned on 8 weeks. Five months later I am still struggling w/completion. Design was creative, but work that followed was done off of a sketch. No architectural plans were ever done. Caused a ton of problems. Workers showed up when they wanted. When the did show up it was 3pm and were working into the dinner hour. I accommodated their schedule giving them full access to my home,even when I traveled to expedite the work. Cabinet came with wrong stain,items installed wrong, hallway patched w/wrong size wallboard leaving it lumpy.Owner not in control of what was happening. Poor communication w/workers. He contacted me when payments were due. Called 7 times for final payment, not knowing the workers hadn't finished. I updated him! fax upon fax. He threatened workers to finish. Subcontractors careless. 1 ceiling started falling down after 2 weeks.Sunday Ads are beautiful but don't judge book by cover. Can't recommend ever.