CASTLE ROCK CABINETRY

What a nightmare!!! This company had a bid about 60% of other bids, and our builder assured us that they had seen good work come out of them. Completion was promised 2-3 months after signing the contract. 1 year later, only small portions were done. The builder kept trying to get them to come back out by constantly calling, but they wouldn't answer the phone or call back for weeks at a time unless the construction company owners called personally (they apparently had other work with them, and the owner had some leverage). Many promises were made with minimal follow through. Every once and awhile there would be a sudden burst of work that would raise hopes, but this would soon fail again. As the product came into being, it became obvious that the workmanship was awful. I am not a carpenter: I even have trouble drawing a straight line, but I could see large gaps in the joints, crooked crown molding, unfinished surfaces, crooked shelves, and many other flaws. After wrestling with them to finish for over 1 year, I was finally able to get the construction company to fire them. Unfortunately, this left a fairly complex job only partially finished, and many errors were present. The construction company could only seem to come up with one other good name for completing the job, but this person turned out to be a good personal friend of the original woodworker (Ed). He convinced me to allow Ed to be his assistant, because he would not take the job otherwise. I reluctantly agreed, because I didn't appear to have any other option. I was then told that it would take no more than another 1-2 months to finish, but as the new person (who was excellent, by the way) got into the project, he encountered way more than he bargained for, and was really challenged to fix everything. Some things were a real challenge, because to fix them completely, entire 12 foot tall cabinets would need to be ripped out and redone. He was able to find ways to get around these problems, albeit things are not as if they had been done correctly in the first place. Amusingly, anything that was left up to Ed without direct oversight by the new woodworker was done incorrectly or askew. Examples are as follows: hanging rails for file cabinet drawers were installed on a diagonal, guide railing for the rolling ladder was crooked, a second ladder was made too short and it would not reach the bar properly (hard to explain better). There were so many more things, but they are hard to explain through the written word (only Homer would do them justice). We ended up withholding the second half of the money from Castle Rock, so that we could pay others for the rest of the stuff and to correct everything. The final cost will be about the same as the estimate, but the emotional cost was great.