SUN DESIGN REMODELING SPECIALISTS INC

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The estimate was complete and impressive. It was the highest bid we got but the details were complete and their other work in the portfolio they provided us is beautiful. I have not done the remodel as I learned of an issue in our neighborhood that my cause us to move in the fall. BRAC 133.

Although we did not attend, we were invited to free design seminars. We did take a tour of one of their spectacular remodels. However, there prices were much higher than most contractors. Perhaps it's because they have a big staff to support?

When I first bought my house in 1997 I had my kitchen remodeled, but it was very quick and cheap. I was always going to add a tile back splash and redo the floor, but I never got to it. After my neighbors used Sun Design to put an addition on their house and were very happy I decided to remodel my kitchen and remove a wall between the dining room and kitchen as well as update those things I had never gotten to. I had had a number of bad experiences with terrible contractors over the years and thus was a bit concerned about how this would all turn out. Since one of my main goals was to make my kitchen more efficient and gain more counter top space, I spent a lot of time researching various ways of improving the layout of my kitchen and also spent time talking to Sun Design. After many months we finally agreed on a contract and the start date of November 1, 2010. Jimmy Jennings was assigned as the lead carpenter. Sun Design had told me up front it was very unlikely that they would be finished by Thanksgiving. But Jimmy not only worked the schedule to complete the job by Thanksgiving - he and all the subcontractors did a terrific job! Jimmy seems to be a perfectionist and the work he completed showed it. And Jimmy was terrific in solving problems which arose during the process. At one point when he showed me my future kitchen sink it turned out to be the wrong one. We worked together that day to find another one which would work, but the next day he arrived with another one which we both agreed would work even better. It seems to me one of the main reasons to hire a general contractor like Sun Design is they spend all the time and effort (so you don't have to) to find the best specialists such as hardwood floor experts, dry wall experts, plumbers and tile experts. I found this to be very true with Sun Design. The dry wall experts were especially good since they had to match new dry wall to old plaster walls which is no easy task (They also fixed all the old holes left by the first remodelers!). So ultimately all the promises which Sun Design made to me did indeed turn out to be true. And all those Holmes on Homes programs I watched on HGTV which told of contractor disasters happened to other people and not me. Everyone warned me that kitchen remodels take longer than they say and cost more than they say. But in this case that wasn't true. The job was completed in 3 1/2 weeks when I was told about 5 weeks up front and although there was some additional costs - most were transparent up front or changes that I decided to make during the remodeling process (such as add a water filtration system). I think Sun Design is very lucky to have Jimmy working for them, but I'm sure the rest of the team helps to make sure he's able to do his job so well. I've now had a chance to use my remodeled kitchen for over a month and it has met all my goals and exceeded my expectations. Thanks Sun Design - when I'm ready to have my bathroom done - I'll be calling you.

I like them a lot. They did a great job with the design. They're a little bit expensive, but they are expensive because they do great quality work. They were a little bit behind schedule, but I would definitely hire them again.

They did great. We live in a 1955 built mid century house which has a top floor and then a lower floor and they basically re-organized all the spaces on the top floor. They re-did the kitchen, made it wider, opened it up and raised the ceiling in the dinning room. They turned two bedrooms into a master suite with a walk-in closet and a big master bath and we converted a couple of closets into a laundry room and converted a bath into a power room. They did the flooring with a sub, windows and refinished a lot of my floors, but also had to patch because we re-organized the spaces. It was complicated because we had a lot of plaster walls. I spent maybe $280,000 on that work and I think they were great. Everyday was not perfect and first of all they showed up everyday and if things went wrong which periodically they did, they fixed it all. We lived in the basement while this work was being done. I would recommend them to others and I would say my one negative was that I did have some conflicts with the designer. He was a little persnickety as designer like they tend to be, but when I made that clear to the owners they then sent me another designer to figure out a few problems. The owners, lead carpenter and the project foreman were great and really the designer did a great job, but she was just persnickety as creative people sometimes are. The work was completed between May and September of 2009. I could have gotten less expensive estimates and if the contractor isn’t making money it is not going to be a happy relationship, so I think it was a fair price.

It was done in 2 1/2 months and they cleaned up everyday after they finished working for the day. Not much stress through the whole renovation. It all went very smoothly. The workers were very pleasant and polite. They did a wonderful job and we would hire them again to do other work in our house. We really enjoyed working with them. Any warranty work that we've had done has been done within a day.

Overall, the project went extremely well. The project remained on budget, on schedule and, the delivered product, exceeded our expectations. Five years after being constructed, the conservatory is as beautiful as when it was build and it continues to be a favorite spot for our family and visitors to our home. With the benefit of hindsight, we attribute it to the professional design team approach that is a hallmark of Sun Design; the use of top of the line subcontractors such as Solar Innovation which built the metal conservatory frame and; the use of good tradesmen. This latter point was reinforced a few weeks ago when we had a problem with the conservatory door lock and contacted Sun Design to get a recommendation for a local locksmith who might be familiar with the particular lock. We realized the warrenty period had expired years ago but wanted to get the right person for the job. We were surprised and delighted when Sun team member B.W. offerred to stop by to check out the problem. He did so and, with a few minor adjustments, the lock is now as good as new. Sun Design claims they build "relationships" and they mean it. I will take deeds over words any day.

The job went smoothly from start to finish. My husband and I are in the design field and very opinionated as a result. Sun Design was open to incorporating our ideas along with theirs. The company is very well organized and kept us up-to-date on on the project with weekly walk-thrus. As with any job of this size there were a few details that weren't right the first time around, but Sun Design corrected them immediately -- with a smile. We were very impressed with the quality of work and attention to detail. In addition, the site was always kept clean with minimum disruption to the rest of our house. The work took longer than originally anticipated but the final product more than made up for that inconvenience. Throughout the job, we felt that Sun Design considered us part of the team; we would highly recommend them.

We are moving forward with them. We are just figuring out specifically what we want to do. They are tweaking it so we can figure out given the money that we have what we would like to do and we can afford to do. They are really organized and they are very easy to talk to. They also ask a lot of good questions to help us to decide what we can and should do in our house. This is the first time we are doing any remodeling and we find their organizational way of doing business really suits us and they are very pleasant to deal with. We are currently working on the plan and the coming week they are going to give us a schedule and come out and measure so that we can figure out more on the financials. We have signed the agreement and paid them to work on the initial plans. We met with them a couple of times and then we went out to their offices. We are converting the deck into a screened porch and updating our basement. We have an unfinished utility room that we are looking to finish as well. They have been very much keeping on it, but in a positive way, about moving it along. They haven't been hounding us, but they have been encouraging to keep us on track. Their punctuality is excellent. If they say they are going to be somewhere at 9 am, they walk in through the door at that time. So far everything has been great.

The entire process was very smooth working with us and incorporating our desires. They were very creative with design solutions and options. The team including sales/designer and construction crew were very organized and extremely thorough. Their communication process keeping us informed was excellent and the execution of construction was methodical and on time.

We met with Sun Design in the summer to begin the design process and go over how the work would progress. Design: This was probably the least satisfying part of the process. I would encourage others to go over their design very carefully, ask for alternative solutions until you are sure you have something you like and ask for price points to aid in your decision making. Getting things right during the design will make everyone happier in the end. In our case, there were several mistakes. But to Sun Design's credit, they fixed all the mistakes in order to make us happy. Build: The build phase progressed through the summer and into the fall. All the sub contractors were clean and left the work area clean. A couple of times the project manager had to bring subs back to fix problems but mistakes happen and all were fixed. Perhaps the most telling story about Sun Design's philosophy to please their customer concerned replacement of shower tile that obviously was a design mistake. Sun agreed the tile was a mistake and replaced it at no extra cost. In the end, we got the bathroom we desired, at the cost we agreed to from the beginning. It is a wonderful addition to our house. One other thing I would like to add. Construction involves a lot of people. On reason why we went with Sun was because we hoped they would supervise the subcontractors and fix mistakes. This they did which gave us peace of mind and great results.

We were happy with them. They were on time, responsive, and were very honest with us.

All of the projects were completed with the highest level of professionalism and accuracy. When a shower door was late in arriving, I recieved a call from the management of Sun Design and the owner of the the shower door company explaining the back log and their attention to the matter. Do do your research as to the look and feel of your project so that you get the finished result you want. Sun Design offers lots of good ideas as to how to incorporate your ideas into reality.

The project went poorly from the start. Although we had moved out of the house during the remodel, we visited the house every day and took hundreds of photos to document the project. On the first visit to the house after demolition/construction began, we discovered problems in the construction of the concrete slab for the addition (i.e. not built to plan) and halted the concrete pour in order to work out the issues (namely poor structural slab work where grade beams did not even span to their supports). In addition, Sun Design left a dumpster on our street (contrary to our specific instructions) during the demolition phase, which resulted in the police being called to our house and a late night phone call to Sun Design to have the dumpster removed immediately. The carpenter assigned to our project did not appear to be very experienced, and we found numerous oversights and mistakes that would have resulted in construction not meeting code. Sun Design's response when we brought the problems to their attention was that they were not done with the work and that their work would pass inspection. We repeatedly reminded them that the standard per our contract was to meet code (not "pass inspection"). At one point my husband pulled back the house paper to check, only to discover deficiencies hidden by the paper. During a rainstorm, we had water pouring in to the house from a hole left in the wall. We reported it Sun Design via their emergency phone number. They sent someone out, but the person's solution was to mop up the mess with our bath towel and then throw the towel in the trash can. We demanded a meeting with Craig Durosko, who is President of the company, and, to his credit, he did come out to the house to meet us. The inexperienced carpenter was replaced by the Project Manager and things went a little better. However, despite the change in personnel, there continued to be a lack of supervision over the subcontractors, which resulted in several other costly mishaps such as installation of the wrong countertop in the master bathroom, failing to install the undertile heating system (which resulted in having to demo the installed tile, reorder tile and reinstall), not accounting for actual dimensions of a bathtub resulting in having to move a toilet, etc. Sun Design did absorb the costs of these errors, but every time we caught an error, we had to prove that they made an error. Other mishaps were less costly, but were a testament to their lack of supervision over their subcontractors (e.g. improperly installed thermostatic valve in a bathroom, improper installation of plumbing in a shower resulting in having to break through from the backside of the wall in order to avoid demolishing tile, beer can in the back yard from subs despite our very specific instructions that alcohol was not permitted on our property). We also had a serious impass over the sufficiency of the design of our addition, which we discovered only because my husband happens to be a structural engineer. Sun Design's design did not meet code for wind bracing. We took up the issue with Fairfax County and ended up having a three-way meeting with Sun Design and the Fairfax County chief structural engineer. Eventually, we settled on a fix. Finally, Sun Design used our family room as a work room and failed to adequately protect our floor. As a result our wood floor is sporting large scratches from nails and gouges from tools being dropped. With a lot of negotiation, Sun Design did agree to reduce the total cost of the project to account for the damage to our floor. On a positive note, Sun Design did not simply disappear when problems would come up, but it was always alarming to us that they did not have the technical knowledge that one would expect from a company which claims many accolades. Also, the higher cost that Sun Design charged for their services (relative to what other contractors would have charged) did not translate into a high-level of workmanship, as we expected. After much contemplation and the passage of time (which has mellowed the bitterness), I would not categorize Sun Design as a "nightmare contractor". They stuck around and did work with us, and they had some customer service-oriented things in place (such as their emergency phone number). However, our overall impression is that, while they may do well on the cosmetic aspects of a remodel, they were deficient in the technical capabilities required for an addition. They also did not closely supervise their subcontractors. In lieu of having Sun Design come back to fix some more minor issues, we have chosen to hire other contractors in whom we have more confidence. We are happy that we now have a larger master bedroom with walk-in closets and updated and enlarged bathrooms, but the project took a tremendous toll on us. For the amount of effort and oversight required, we should have hired an architect for the design and coordinated and supervised all the contractors ourselves.

We used them for a major ($300k) remodel of the interior and exterior of our house. The project manager was horrible, yet neither the two owners (Craig Durosko and Bob Gallagher) would never get on the phone with me to discuss our concerns. I even went to the office to see them but they would not come out, and shuffled me off with someone else. I left message after message and not once did they return the calls. The lousy project manager ended up getting fired at the end of the project. Did we ever get a call of apology? Heck no. That guy hardly ever had anyone on the job actually working. He only brought us a comparatively unskilled young man whose primary task was sweeping and staying on his cell phone the whole day looking for weekend work. No kidding. They left the gate open in our yard and our beautiful purebred dog got out and was hit by a car. No apology from them at all. When I managed to get the attention of other project managers, they rolled their eyes at what was happening/not happening on our job site. We found out later that this project manager we were saddled with used to be the boss of all the project managers but just got demoted before he was assigned to us. So it was clear he was resentful. After months of this, I started taking parts of the project out of the contract, got refunds, and hired the subcontractors myself. Guess what? I saved a ton of money, and in all cases cut their prices by thousands of dollars and ended up being able to afford exactly what we wanted (i.e., Brazilian cherry wood floors versus oak, which is what they were going to give us). The design work they did was not worth much either. I basically came up with the design myself. They said they'd put in all the "upscale" add-ons, like sconces, etc., but they didn't add a thing unless I told them to. Thank goodness I know how to do research on the Internet! They also charge WAY TOO MUCH, to the tune of $50,000-$85,000 on our project alone, as I later determined. We managed to redeem a lot of it by getting the quality of the materials and work significantly increased by taking things out of the contract. This included the siding, the stone work on the front of the house that we could now afford to add in, the flooring that I mentioned earlier, the garage door (we upgraded to a better looking product), etc. For each of these things, we took the money back and got it done with better materials. I went to their website after the project was pretty far along, and I looked at a page where they listed Job Descriptions for various positions they were trying to hire. Their company philosophy is to serve as "cheerleader" [their language] for the project manager!! Forget about fixing legitimate problems, just make sure no one looks bad or tells the truth to the customer! I think that shows a lot of contempt for the customers, and their "work quality level" reflects that. Some staff will quietly acknowledge it, but only off the record.

Needed addition in short time frame. Sun Design was able to complete the job within our time frame (other contractors could not meet our time frame). Sun Design started about 1 month after expected, but completed work by agreed upon date. Its designers worked with us to build an accessible bath in a fairly small space and provided options so that we could keep our project within budget. Cost for project was somewhat higher than other bids we received, but the quality of work,and the ability to meet our time frames made the extra cost well worth it. Had an issue with the type of roofing on part of the addition due to the slope of the roof. A more expensive roofing material was needed than was in the agreed upon contract. Sun Design paid the extra cost; we did not. At the end of each day during construction, its workers cleaned up--I've never seen a cleaner construction site. They took extra steps to ensure that we were not affected by the construction as we we living in the house at the same time. They had workers address other issues related to the construction, such as nail pops in other parts of the house.

The job went well and they exceeded our expectations, there were no cost overruns or change orders.

The Sun Design staff are professional and are very good at sales. We do not believe Sun Design is a good value for kitchen remodeling. The only service and things of value we received for $3700 were the following: a two hour measurement meeting; a three hour kick off design meeting with some small test holes made in drywall. The only designs discussed were a preliminary design on the original kitchen footprint with no changes except a small pantry. This design on a relatively small kitchen was at the maximum budget discussed of $80,000. The other design discussed with no real drawings was a proposal to add approximately 24 square feet for an additional approximate $40,000 for a total of $120,000. There were also a few email and telephone discussions to arrange meetings.

I THINK THAT THE SUB CONTRACTORS HAD VERY POOR SUPERVISION DURING THIS JOB. I FINALLY GOT TIRED OF THE SLIP SHOD MANNER OF CONSTRUCTION AND WENT OUT TO SUPERVISE THE JOB MYSELF, HAVING SOME BACKGROUND IN THE FIELD. I WAS PRETTY UPSET WITH THE WHOLE THING.