Rethink Remodeling

At the time we were under contract to purchase our home.  The seller had contracted with Rethink Remodeling to do some "renovation" work to try to better market the house.  I believe the total amount of the remodeling work was approximately $35,000. We bought the house while the remodeling was still ongoing in the winter.  
Now that summer has arrived and we've had occasion to open our windows, we have discovered that Rethink Remodeling did a very shoddy and amateurish job.  The WINDOWS ARE ALL PAINTED SHUT.  So now they are stuck closed.  For the windows that we were able to open, the paint has just torn off.  Now we need to repaint all these areas again.  I have left numerous voicemails and e-mails for Kathy, the owner, to call me.  She has not even bothered to return a single call or e-mail.
If you want SHODDY and EXPENSIVE renovation work done....call Rethink Remodeling.

The job went great initially as the first phase of the project was directed by my husband. (an interior designer) I was 8.5 mos pregnant and my husband worked with the crew and provided them with specs for materials and color choices. Pretty much all of the painting, wallpapering and decorating were complete before I was allowed to move into the house. That seemed great at the time, however the longer we lived with the work (and ultimately the cost/benefit analysis of the entire project) we started to regret (or rethink) our decision to use them as a resource. 
A few examples of some of the stuff that went wrong:
 Included in the cost for the interior painting was to prepare several wall surfaces for papering. This requires the wall to be primed and made smooth so that previous nail holes and other surface inconsistencies do not appear once the wallpaper "settles". My husband selected several custom papers to be applied (by another vendor) however the walls were not prepared correctly, and despite the wall paper hanger's deftness in his craft some of the visual appeal is lost when you can see bumps coming thru and interrupting the pattern in the paper. This will only occur a year or so after the paper has been hung, that is why it is important to make sure the walls are prepared thoroughly.
The exterior painting that was done was not applied properly and did not weather thru the first winter. The provider had less than an acceptable response to how to resolve the issue. 
 When they re-installed toilets and pedestal sinks and appliances (in order to paint) they weer not leveled or properly affixed to the wall which in one case caused our nanny to have an accident. (no one was hurt)
There were also a lot of inconsistencies in the billing. The labor rates seemed to be billed on a sliding scale that did not quite make sense once all was looked at objectively and all at once. The project started in early June 2011 and concluded Mid August We were emotionally shot and I think it was also a bad time for us to be undertaking such a huge project, but...
On a more positive note: I was really happy to find that this is company owned and operated by a woman (which I will always champion!) and to be honest Kathy the representative seemed very friendly and organized.  It is possible that we caught her at a time when we were making more demands than she actually had the ability to facilitate. Being a new homeowner has been quite a learning experience for us! We are happy to share our experiences with others here so that we may learn the ropes. 

We had decided to replace the existing window over the sink to make it larger and decided not to do a tile backsplash.  Kathy was very accomodating and always kept us up on the current costs and balances.  Her guy, Marco and his crew were also great and I never felt uncomfortable with them in our house.  They were clean and very polite.  We love the kitchen and feel it works perfectly with our needs and lifestyle!  I do have to say that we used the same fridge we had from before and it was wobbly after they had re-installed it but Kathy came out the next day and adjusted it for us.  She also had someone come and raise the height of some of the hanging lights we have over our island because we realized they were too low.  I would definitely recommend them to anyone!