Howard Miller Kitchens Baths Additions

Decided to go with somebody else.

Update:The response from Howard Miller is not true. This guy was inour house and gave us an estimate for complete bathroom remodel.

Howard Miller Kitchens Baths Additions provided excellent service and work while renovating our kitchen. This was a relatively small project for them, but Howard personally worked with us to make sure the design and materials were what we wanted and were of good quality. He really cares about the quality of the design and the workmanship. Importantly, Howard also worked with us to stay within our budget. He followed up with us after several months to make sure we were satisfied and has kept in touch with us since then. 

First off, Howard and Rosanne are very detailed oriented.  Howard makes sure he does his best to foresee any issues that may occur on the job and then tries to plan these into all his estimates.  Given his tactics, I planned for the estimates to be on the high side, especially given the quality of materials and workmanship that Howard and Rosanne give to their projects.  Starting in September of 2012, our first initial couple of meetings went well with Howard and Rosanne, even though they were usually late (we expected that from contractors).  They took a look at our layouts and Rosanne did a fabulous job coming up with designs that worked well with our tastes as well as the layout of our house.  So we asked them to give us an estimate for each design they came up with (1 design for the kitchen and 1 design for the living room).  They said they would have them in a week and we would discuss them.  When they came back a week later (late as usual), they only had one estimate for us, which was for the kitchen.  The estimate they gave us was $45,000 which was $15,000 over our budget.  We knew kitchens would be expensive, which is why we had the living room as our backup project in case we couldn't afford the kitchen renovation at this time.  However, as I mentioned before, they did not have the estimates for the living room, but told us that doing the living room for under $20,000 would not be an issue and we would have the estimates in writing in a couple of days.  So we went ahead and signed a contract for them to do the living room and gave them a $3500 retainer fee ($2000 of which was supposed to go to the project itself).
This is where things started to go south.  Instead of getting the estimate for the living room a couple of days later, we received them a week later after sending an email to Howard to "check-in" with him.  When we received them, the estimate total was $30,000.  $10,000 over our budget.  After talking to Howard and letting him know our budget, he said he would revise the estimate and get it down to $20,000.  The next estimate he gave us was $25,000 which was still over budget.  After going back and forth with him over email more than 10 times, he finally told me the only way he could get it to $20,000 is if I were to be open to paying in cash.  As naive as I was at this point, I almost agreed to it.  However, talking to friends and family, they thought that paying in cash was a warning sign.  So I finally told him that that was not an option.  After this, he said that it wasn't possible to go any lower than the $25,000 he estimated.  If we had known this in the first place, we wouldn't have signed the contract.
So when I asked if we could get part of the retainer fee back since we no longer wanted to move forward with the project, they told us to wait until January of 2013 to see if we could work something out then after the holidays, since it was a very busy time for them at the current moment and they had some personal events going on they needed to take care of.  We agreed to have them reach out to us when they weren't so busy and we could talk about seeing eye to eye on the living room project.  I never heard from them in January or February.  At this point, I knew for sure I wasn't going to do the project with them but wanted to see how long it would take them to reach out to me. Finally in April of 2013, I finally had to "check-in" with them again to get conversation started again, because at that point I knew it they weren't going to reach out to me.  I ended up getting no responses back from them.  Finally I received a response about 4 weeks later stating that Howard was having "email difficulties".  They claimed they did 150 hours of work ($15,000 worth), mind you alot of the 150 hours was spent by Howard trying to go back and forth with me on hitting our original budget of $20,000 he said he could do in the first place.   After all was said and done, Howard didn't think we should get any of the retainer back given the amount of hours he put into our project, however, for good business ethics, they said they would give us $500 back and of course if we would not speak poorly of them.  At that point, I told them it wasn't worth it for us and we would rather let others know what we went through instead of the $500.
So to sum this whole experience up, I think Rosanne and Howard are capable of doing great work as Rosanne has a great eye for design and Howard is very detail oriented with his contracting work. However, they seem to be very disorganized, continuously behind schedule, late with deadlines, and can't stick to estimates.  I don't think they purposely tried to take advantage of us, but there were a lot of empty promises on their end that left us hanging out to dry.  I know we were in the wrong to sign a contract without having the estimate in writing (even though we had a verbal one) and we have chalked this up as a "lesson learned" for us and won't do that again.  I hope that this review will help the next person working with Howard and Rosanne, and can learn from our mistake and know the warning signs as well, if they happen to go through the same process.

If I had to pick two words to describe Howard, it would be "Honest" and "Meticulous." 
With a Howard Miller project, everything that can possibly be considered, is considered.  His estimates are extremely thorough; there are no surprises if he can possibly avoid it.  He is extremely detail-oriented, down to things you never heard of and don't think are important, but which do matter to the project as a whole.  He is very very good at looking at the trees while not losing sight of the forest.  
He doesn't sugar-coat things, nor does he exaggerate.  If he doesn't think what you want will work, or if he has a better idea, he will tell you - diplomatically. If there's something he is unfamiliar with, he won't BS you, he will research the daylights out of it and come back to you with a thoughtful recommendation. He has strong opinions, but he has architectural training and years of experience to back them up. You don't have to take his advice.  But in my experience, it's really better if you do, because he's generally right.
I am most impressed with Howard's dedication to improving energy efficiency in homes, and his commitment to learning new methods of home improvement.  He doesn't simply recommend the latest new gadget or whatever.  He makes sure it's right for you and your home.  With Howard, there is no such thing as a client he doesn't care about. 
He does have one flaw:  he tends to run late for appointments.  Nobody's perfect.   We have trusted Howard Miller with our home for nearly 25 years and never regretted it.  Highest possible recommendation.