GARRET EAKIN

If only the quality of Garret's work equaled his ego! We hired him to help us recreate our property into our "forever home" and unfortunately the result of his design flaws have left us with one bedroom so small that a standard size bed won't fit in it, and a disproportionately large master bedroom- while nice and large, it is way more space than we need. We paid him to draft the plans for the house, and he either never measured, or improperly measured- we never did get a straight answer from him- the main water pipe to the village water line. This is a standard measurement based on the number of plumbing fixtures in the home, and he misrepresented the size of the pipe in the plans. So upon final inspection prior to obtaining the occupancy permit, the inspector ordered the pipe to be replaced. Had we known in the beginning of the project, we would not have hesitated to make the change. But at the end of the project to have to replace the pipe meant ripping up our beautifully re-landscaped front yard. At first when we asked him about what happened with the measurement of the pipe, Garret acted as though he had no idea what we were talking about and asked what the contractor said. Later when we asked him about it again, he blamed it on a picky inspector and said he was only trying to save us money. We hired him to create compliant and accurate plans, not save us money by skirting the rules of what is standard building code! The fact that he'd say he was trying to save us money is perhaps most insulting because our project went grossly over budget, and he received a generous percentage of the entire cost of the project including the contractor's fees! Mea culpa- we were completely naive and agreed to a terrible contract with him- it was without a doubt our fault for agreeing to it, a terribly expensive and painful mistake which we are paying dearly for now. These are the most egregious examples of how the measurements of Garret's plans were off, but unfortunately not the only ones. It was as though Garret drew the plans but never really measured them, or if he measured them, his calibration tools were off by inches. As such, you get the sense that in many places throughout our home, the rooms and doorways are literally off by inches- the kitchen being the most noticeable with the beams in the ceiling obviously not aligned with the cabinets- not enough for it to seem like they aren't aligned by design, just awkward. Had we not made field corrections with the contractor- changes that Garret was resistant to I should add- we would have had such a large peninsula counter top that opening our oven door would have been challenging. The bullet trim around the doorways overlaps in several rooms, which is awkward and ugly. The built in cabinets in the master bedroom aren't symmetical- they are visibly off because they are placed in either side of a window. We had to remove a door leading to the family room from the mudroom within a week of moving back in as the space was too tight to have both doors open at once, and created a dead space that was just begging for an entry table. We also really struggled with Garret to come up with a coherent design for the facade of the house. For an award winning architect who lives in the neighborhood, and is so involved with Oak Park architecture, you'd think from the property examples we gave him for inspiration would have been enough for him to create a design we liked. He ordered ball and stick trim for the porch that was so large and disproportionate to the rest of the porch that it looked like we had a row of back scratchers nailed to our porch. Again it was as though he never measured what he ordered. We never approved the order for the trim, and Garret himself admitted they were too big but rather than returning the trim and getting something more appropriate, he had it installed without our approval (which he clearly would not have gotten). The facade became a joke at that point- he wasn't interested in listening to what we wanted and it wasn't worth fighting him anymore. When we tried to communicate to Garret how we felt about the issues with the house- and there are other issues but these are the highlights- he became defensive and unpleasant. And now, he completely ignores our emails. We also discovered he'd actually put our personal contact information on his website to act as a reference without our permission! Knowing what we know now, clearly we'd have selected a different architect, we would never have signed such a terrible contract, and we sincerely hope we never run into Garret at the grocery store in town!