Washtenaw Woodwrights

We initially met with the owner, Bruce Curtis to discuss the work we needed to have done in our house – fixing flooring damaged areas in the living room, cabinet and floor refinishing. He sketched the kitchen and said that his firm could do the job. He sent a small crew, Carl and Keith, to work on the living room floor. They were professional, courteous and cleaned up after themselves. The floor work required new sheetrock in the basement bedroom below the Living Room floor. Bruce contacted a sheetrock contractor that does ‘quality’ work whom he had used for years. The sheetrock contractor and an assistant arrived to do the installation, but not finishing of the sheetrock. That seemed kind of odd to us because the ceiling is small (roughly 8’ x 12’). My wife looked at their work before they left and found a very spongy spot in the ceiling. The contractor argued with her and refused to fix the poor workmanship, touting that sheetrock mud would fix the problem. Bruce came by in the evening and also said that sheetrock mud would fix the problem. The next day the sheetrock contractor’s ‘Finish’ crew arrived and agreed that the sheetrock was not installed properly, refusing to even try to finish it. A carpenter came and agreed with us about the poor quality of work. He then removed the sheetrock and re-installed it correctly. The mudding was then completed. It took about 1/2 hour to fix the sheetrock after over 4 hours of complaining and discussing the issue with the sheetrock contractor and Bruce, who hired him. We had intended for Bruce to remove/refinish the kitchen cabinets, but were becoming increasingly concerned about the work quality. He was informed that we would remove the cabinets and seal off the entire kitchen with visqueene in preparation for the floor sanding. To do this, we requested time to complete this part prior to the floor sanding company coming to our home. Bruce never provided any dates. By the time we had removed all the kitchen cabinets, stove, refrigerator, sink and visqueened all walls, windows and doors, he still had no response other than ‘Working on this. Will be in touch’. He never spoke with any flooring contractor because he did not know about ‘Dustless Sanding’, even though he indicated he did during his initial visit. His eventual response was to return a portion of our deposit while adding on an additional amount for ‘Completion of Design’ of $400.00. His excuse for not completing the work was that he ‘couldn’t provide a quote due to quality’. Bottom Line: Unbeknownst to us, he is the only person on the payroll of Washtenaw Woodwrights and literally subcontracts all the work to others. We asked for, but never received any definitive/itemized cost projections from him. He seemed to pad his bill with costs for design. The only work to be done on the 12’ x15’ kitchen was adding (1) light and moving kitchen cabinets roughly 1.5”. In other words, the design costs were outrageous. There is still $1,200 owed to us.

We selected Bruce Curtis, the owner, in October of 2013 after interviewing several contractors. We chose WW because we wanted to install the Holiday Kitchen line of cabinets, and he is the only supplier in the Ann Arbor area for those cabinets. We had also visited one of his basement renovation jobs and looked at the high quality of the workmanship there. The Holiday kitchen cabinets are what are called semi-custom. They are standard cabinets, but can be sized up or down to the 1/8” inch to fit your space. The planning and design process for the kitchen and bathroom took over two months. Bruce had excellent design ideas and suggestions, and he definitely knew his cabinet line. He was able to provide 3-D drawings of what the kitchen would look like with various cabinet configurations and appliance layouts. The biggest problem is that Bruce has one foreman/skilled carpenter/engineer and one helper doing all of the work. He then subs out the plumbing, electrical, tiling, and drywall. His foreman/carpenter is excellent, but because he is Bruce's only carpenter, he is always working at two or three places at the same time. Also, the subcontractors all have their own businesses, and for whatever reason take their time about showing up, often holding up the process for the next part of the job. All of these people did high quality, very professional work. The job when completed, is absolutely stunning and everything is like a perfectionist'sdream. But it was very, very slow. At first, the family room was left off the plan, because the process of planning the kitchen was a lot. That turned out to be a mistake, as those cabinets then didn’t get ordered until later, which again produced a delay. I was promised that the job would be completed in a three month time period so that I could join my husband in Europe for a vacation. (This excluded the fireplace which I added later.) We were a couple of weeks late getting started on demolition, and things just kept getting pushed back more throughout the entire process. There were several periods of two or three days when no one would be at the house working. And yes, there was a structural problem, but it was solved within one week's time. Again, it took three weeks to get the workmen back in here to begin to fix it, order a new cabinet, and for me to sign off on the new drawings. We finally concluded everything around June 15, which was nine months from the time we started the planning. On price, we started out with a budget of $60,000. However—be forewarned. That would be the cost of purchasing standard cabinets that need no custom sizing. In many cases, in order to fit your walls, they need to add an inch, or even so little as a quarter inch. This all costs extra. Also, I finally ended up purchasing some of my own lighting, tiles, etc. in order to try to speed up the process and decrease the number of middlemen. Those expenses are not included in the amount listed above. In conclusion, if you want really high quality workmanship, and are OK with having your house torn up for long periods of time, this is the place to go. Bruce has excellent design skills and his workmen, including the subs, do professional, perfectionist level work. But beware--if he tells you three months--it will be six to nine!

We have had Bruce contract almost every remodel job on our house, replace windows, finish a basement and the latest job: remodel the kitchen. Lauren was the kitchen planner, we figured everything out before we started so that we could get the estimate and the materials would be here when they were needed. I started meeting with her in February and was ready to go by March. Paul was the subcontractor on the job and did an admirable job of tear out and rebuild. cleaned up the job site every day, dust protection in place, The dry wall repair on the ceiling where the soffits were removed are invisible like the room never had them. I did have 2 issues one with a flooring defect which we ended up getting someone to fix and a plumbing leak under the sink which my husband fixed(this showed up months after the job was completed. All in all the job look fantastic and I love my new kitchen.

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They were very good and very responsive. They coordinated everything well.

The wood columns supporting our front porch were rotting and in need of repair. We took the opportunity to have the whole look of the porch re-done. We chose Washtenaw Woodwrights because we liked the design and the quality of the work that we had seen them do around town. Overall, we are very happy with our remodeled porch. The quality is excellent and it looks great. Even three years later, we continue to get compliments from friends, neighbors and even strangers. The only negative was that the timing of the project turned out to be unfortunate as Washtenaw Woodwrights was struggling through the down economy which resulted in some delays in the completion of our project as they worked through staffing changes.

I contacted them in Nov. 2009. They were to start in early Feb. 2010. However they received the wrong windows but did not realize they were the wrong two windows until they came to install them in early Feb. 2010. They contacted me and told me they had to order new windows. They then disappeared until I contacted them in April 2010. It took to June 2010 before they did the job. The quality of the job was excellent. However much stress on my part occurred due to the fact that they did not keep me up to date on when they would complete the job. I suspect this was too small a job for this company.