CLASSIC CONSTRUCTION

The owner is a great salesman. He spent several hours on two different occassions discussing our kitchen remodel with my wife and I on the weekday after my son was in bed. He provided thoughts to consider for how our use of the space would be different as our kids grew up and seemed sincerely interested in making sure we got the best experience for our time and money. This was very different than the other several companies I had over to provide estimates for the job. After we signed the fixed-fee contract, though, things started to change. Upon review of the first design we had drafted together, I noticed a lot had mysteriously changed. For instance the 42" tall cabinets were downgraded to 32" cabinets. And the 30" deep pantries were changed to 24". He passed that off as clerical errors and made the changes to the paper in pencil and promised to get me updated copies. I never seen another copy of them, despite my badgering for him to bring them. Upon inventory of the delivered cabinets the day before demolition was scheduled to start, I noticed that the 30" pantries were again downgraded, this time to 12" deep! I was pushing for the 30" because I wanted it to be flush with my fridge. I was told they didn't make a pantry that deep and I would have to settle for a 24". Since this job was scheduled to take 4-6 weeks, I reluctantly handed over a key to my house since it would be impossible to take that kind of time off of work. So the job started and besides the fact they disregarded my constant reminder that my son had asthma and they had to quarantine that area to minimize the dust, everything seemed to be going fine. Until I came home and the drain pipe running from my kitchen sink to the stack (which was originally outside of the wall a distance of about 4') disappeared. I discovered the carpenter had "notched" about 60% of 3 studs on my outside wall in order to push the drain pipe into the wall so the dishwasher could fit. I called the owner that night, expressed concern for the structural stability of the load bearing wall, and he said they would reinforce the wall with sister studs and it would be fine. I talked to the carpenter later the next day, mentioned my conversation with the owner (which he knew nother of) and he proceeded to yell at me with the classic "I've been doing this xx years" and "you think you know my job better than I do", and threatened to quit the job. Surprised by the aggression and desperate to get the work done since my wife was pregnant, I gave in. The next disaster was when the flooring people came to install the floor. Again, I have to go to work, so... It's a one day job and they're finished when my wife comes home from work to find one of them had clogged up my toilet and done nothing to resolve the issue. She is forced to get the plunger out and splash around in their mess. After several complaints to the owner, we received an apology and a $50 gift card to Applebees from the flooring person. Next, the cabinets all get mounted and it seems that the design was changed again without my knowing and the new peninsula was shifted several inches down and an entire 24" wide wall cabinet was eliminated. After an argument with the owner, who says it was never supposed to be there in the first place, he ordered the unit, but the problem now was it would only partially hang over the countertop, leaving one of the corners to be a head banging hazard. So we now have to retrofit a strange "curved wing" into the coutertop design to account for this. To this day, I'm annoyed everytime I walk into my kitchen and see it. This entire experience made me feel like I was getting ripped off the entire time. I don't know any other way to describe it except that I felt dirty, like talking to a used cars salesman. I would not hire Classic Construction again to do any work on my house.

The work took way too long, the owner of the company always fed us a line of excuses, when we had sewer gases coming into our home, he told me to put bleach down the drains and the smell would not harm us! The new doors we had put on don't close correctly, the new storm doors are not even 2 years old and they are rusting. One of our new windows leaks in a heavy rain and it has been 2 years and we are still trying to resolve the issues. The owner also ignored the final inspection until we got a threatening letter from the city. He always bragged his people were the best and the most professional and that was not the case, they left garbage everyone, cigarette butts, tobacco bags etc. And the work they did was never quite perfect, always needing to be adjusted. There is much more I could complain about, but there isn't enough space. I would never use this company again and would recommend that anyone seeking for large home improvements go with someone much more professional.