AB & K Affordable Bath & Kitchen

I've been slow to write a review, but the way I was treated has niggled at me. I was admittedly, indecisive about design decisions. The employee from AB & K and I did not hit it off. I'd called and asked if I could be assigned another consultant, but was told that I needed to stay with her. By that time, we'd given the company a deposit. The workmen were great and the work done as promised, but I was not 100% happy with the choices we'd made. The employee pressured me, assured me that the choices we were making were excellent ones. In the end, I did sign off on the counter top, cabinet and tile options, but I was unsure about how it would come together. The consultant assured me that it would all look fantastic. I've never loved how it turned out. If you know what you want, they will get it done for you in a timely manner but not with any panache. It is a churning mill of remodeling. I felt as if all they wanted was to get it done and get rid of me. I would never hire them again. (I did not for our subsequent bathroom remodel, which I DO love.) And if you want good design advice, I would steer clear of this company.

Great experience overall. Molly Madsen was very easy to work with at all times. On time always.

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My salesperson ,Carol, was excellent and responding to questions with e- mail or phone. They had a quote available for the project quickly.  Everyone was on time for the project was was courteous and professional. Matt , the coordinator was very good ad staying in touch regarding any concerns.  There were a few hick-ups in things that needed attention and they have been handled immediately.  My only concern is the seam in the counter. I did not realize Silestone had a seam( my fault for not researching that more thoroughly ).  The seam is better than some disasters I have seen on line.  But it is a bit rough to the feel.  Overall I would choose this provider again and recommend them to friends.

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The workmen were courteous and efficient and our end product is acceptable.
Our representative/design consultant, however, was impatient and curt. She didn't give any legitimate design advice, ever. She had no ideas of her own. It was liking working alone. She rushed us through the process, constantly pressuring us to hurry and decide. When we expressed concerns about our choice of granite, she glossed that over, saying that we needed to make the decision and be done. (this was while we were at the granite distributor)  I never felt that she was on our team, but rather on her team, aka the team that gets the money. While our kitchen is serviceable and we have had no problems with the work itself, I would not hire this company to do the work again. They are impersonal, greedy and lack imagination and flare.

Scheduling was not a problem for us, but, they are very busy and it seems that they are having some issues with deadlines and it seemed that they are having scheduling problems with other clients. The actual workers were pollite, clean and hard working after they arrived. We got the impression that a lot of clients are difficult to work with, as they said we were not several times (I guess that is sort of a compliment to us). This is the first remodel we have done in over 15 years, so, not sure if AB&K is typical. Their showroom and resources are phenomenal. They do care about the quality of work they do. There seems to be a primary focus on payment, which is a little sad, but, I'm sure they have their fair share of horror stories from customers who do not realize what they are getting into. Remodeling is expensive for good quality. I guess that the reasons that they did not receive an "A" would be that we were told workers would be arriving at a certain time and they arrived several hours late without explanation several times, and, the interaction with some of the expediters and schedulers was not exactly as friendly as we would have liked.

AB&K Remodeled my kitchen during the summer of 2014.  They were a pleasure to work with as we drew up plans and chose our cabinets, flooring,, etc.  Construction started as scheduled, and we had minimal delays throughout the project.  All of AB&K?s employees are pleasant, professional and extremely good at what they do.  All appointments were punctual and all calls/e-mails were responded to promptly.  Our kitchen turned out beautifully and gave our home a whole new, updated look.  I would definitely use AB&K for future remodeling projects.

They listened and were not pushy. They had good suggestions and ideas and they followed through.

They incorrectly measured the cabinets which meant they had to then reorder the cabinets a second time. Then they put in a base cabinet in that didn't reach the wall and were gonna leave it that way until i said something. Then they ordered a refrigerator that didn't fit and will have to cut the wall if I allow them to continue. I probably will not as their craftsmanship to this point has been awful. I have a 100 year old home. they sent a carpenter who seemed to have never worked in an old house. They mismeasured and tried to cut corners. They were not very cooperative in doing some caulking behind the appliances they installed the wrong hinges on my cabinets so they slam shut. I never had a job foreman come out to my house.

They were professional in every way. Prompt and responsive for our estimate. Available for scheduled appointments.  Timely responses to phone calls. Project team was very professional, pulled proper permits.  Most important, the cost of the job did not go over the budget and things were completed very close to on time.

It went real well and we are very happy with them. They were very responsive to our needs, listened and understood what we were looking for. The quality of their work was very high.  

It went great with AB & K Affordable Bath & Kitchen. It was wonderful. They were very good. They were very punctual. They were on time every day. They got the work completed in a timely fashion. They cleaned up every day after they were done. The last time I used them was probably about 10 months ago. They redid our kitchen and it was top to bottom. I would use them again in the future or recommend them.

The kitchen and bath looks and works wonderfully.
The design process was great. we got what we wanted.  The appliance supplier they sent us to helped find what we wanted.
The build had many scheduling problems and took longer than estimated.
Some work was redone when it didn't look right.
We will definitely use this provider again.

During my first visit to the AB&K showroom in Greenfield, I had the pleasure of meeting my designer, Molly.  Molly patiently listened to what I wanted and after a few days came to my house to see my kitchen and to take measurements.  I met her a week or so later at the showroom to go over her design.  It was obvious that Molly had listened to me and understood what I wanted in my kitchen because the design that she presented was perfect. It included timeless features and an efficient use of space.  And it was beautiful as well!  Throughout the process she continually offered excellent suggestions on additional items such as crown moulding, cabinet hardware, under cabinet lighting, and the sink and faucet that I might like.  I was grateful for her guidance and support. She also assured me that once started, the project would be completed in a timely fashion.
 
The crew arrived promptly on the day promised.  Dan, the carpenter who did most of the work the first week, went to work and finished the tear out in one day.  Over the next few days I watched in admiration as he installed new cabinets and flooring.  In addition, the electrician and plumber worked to complete the rough plumbing, electrical outlets and new lighting.  Over the course of the remodel, many different crew members came to the worksite, and I was impressed by their fine workmanship each day. Each member of the crew was friendly and professional.  And I was pleased that the site was cleaned each day before the crew departed.  There were a couple of glitches that occurred that were not the fault of AB&K, but rather due to my 70 year old home.  Those issues were quickly taken care of to my great satisfaction. The project was completed exactly when Molly said it would be finished, and the results are stunning.  My kitchen was completely transformed!  
I am absolutely delighted with my new kitchen, and I would recommend AB&K to anyone interested in fine design, attention to detail, quality workmanship and prompt completion.

Complete remodel of kitchen and living room. Tile Flooring for an additional 400sqft. Project included removing walls, tile flooring, all new cabinets and new appliance installation. Super dedicated to client satisfaction. Worked through additional changes we suggested with efficiency and cost effectiveness as key themes. Kelly put together a terrific plan and Mark delivered on it. We would definitely use AB&K, Kelly and Mark again. It is easy to see why AB&K wins so many awards.

Our Designer Kelly was fantastic to work with, that is, providing great
ideas and offering us many options fitting our tastes to choose from--- she gets our highest recommendation. 
Our Installer Byron was a true craftsman with an attention to detail and
aiming for perfection. AB&K's showroom allowed us to view the products in advance of our final decisions. In summary, the AB&K team, Kelly, and Byron strived to satisfy our needs and complete our Dream Kitchen within budget and on time. We would highly recommend based on our experience.

They did quite a bit of work for us.  We paid $12000 for the kitchen remodeling.  The work went very well.  Their designer stood out the most to us.  They were on time.  They were professional and timely.  They did a quality job.  They were a little pricey.  They made it worth for us.  If they wouldn't have done a good quality work, then we would have gone with somebody else.

AB & K Affordable Bath & Kitchen worked with me in order to keep it within my budget. My overall impression was they're very good and I would use them again even though I think they may be a little pricey compared with other people. Everybody who worked with was wonderful and cleaned up after themselves. They went beyond what they had to do. They helped me try and do the electrical for my oven and they didn't have to do that. They provided very good service.

UPDATE 12-12-13:  
I am SO HAPPY that I gave AB&K a second chance. They did a wonderful job on updating my bath. They were prompt, courteous, professional, and fun to work with. It seemed like they were as excited and proud of the work as I was. I would now happily recommend them to anyone! Molly Madsen designed, Brandon Chappell did the tile work, and Mike Reichert did the plumbing.  All were smart, personable, easy to work with and highly professional. 

Pricing might be lower elsewhere, but I doubt quality would be better anywhere. They stuck to the original estimate, and threw in a couple nice extras to stay within my budget. I expect I'll be very happy with this bath for years to come. 
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ORIGINAL POST:  The AB&K designer came to our house later that same day, took a quick glance at the bathroom, and pronounced it a gut job, but wouldn't offer any specific comments other than to keep repeating "Gut Job! It's a gut job. $20,000. $20,000." I reminded her of my initial question -- "any quick fixes we can do? what's the first thing we should tackle?" but all she would say was "Gut Job. $20,000."
I was so put off by her rude manners and refusal to provide the promised specifics, that I could not possibly consider working with her on any project, much less a $20,000 bath remodel. So that was $100 down the proverbial drain, for an estimate that turned out to have zero worthwhile content. I can hardly call it an estimate since she never inspected anything close up (she barely set foot in the bathroom -- and no, it's not gross, just old), nor provided any sort of written info. $100 for her time? It takes less than two minutes to drive here, and she spent about 15 minutes in our home, doing nothing other than insulting us.
Since then, I've often considered going back in to the AB&K showroom to see if there's a new designer on staff that might be more professional. After all, they are just down the road, and I did like the stuff they had in their showroom. But I resist the impulse, because after all, if AB&K hires such people as that first designer, they probably would not be a good match for me.

UPDATE 5-1-13
One business day after I posted the original review, the operations manager at AB&K called to address my concerns. She was polite, professional, and demonstrated the kind of customer service that I appreciate. She also offered to have another designer get in touch with me to schedule a "second look", and offered to refund my $100. I don't plan to take them up on the refund -- I think it's fair to apply it to a future purchase, assuming the estimate shows a bit of effort. But the fact that they offered the refund is huge, especially after all this time. 

I was sufficiently impressed with the positive way they responded to my criticism, that I am willing to let them have another chance to estimate this project. For now, I've increased the grade from a D to a B -- hopefully it will go up even higher depending on how things shake out.

The woman I talked to was good.  She did call me right away, and did setup an appointment.  However, her quote was pretty high. 

Very disappointed in the project!  The designer/Sales person did not pay attention to details at the start of the project which led to problems and cost over runs.  We were promised a project manager to ensure the project was high quality.  He only came to our project two times in four (4) months.  He seemed to be only concerned with how soon the work could be done so he could move his one worker to the next project.  Details of the rough lay out of the linen closet were not checked which forced us to end up with a less then visually acceptable bathroom, and  AB&K asked us to pay extra for the labor and material to fix their poor attention to detail.   At the start of the project, during the demolition and during the rough in, licenced professionals did the work, after the City inspected the project and approved the rough work, AB&K assigned one person to do all the work.  All tile, finish carpentery, plumbing, electrical  and dry wall work was done by the same person.  We were told that we would have experts in all trades, not one jack of all trades.  The dry wall work was very dissappointing!!!  We did not discover how bad the work was untill our painter was done and numerous drywall flaws became extremely visiable.  Follow up after the project was very unsatisfactory.  Lights did not work and had to be wired correctly, the new toilet pluged and the line had to be power rodded,  and the most disappointing was the spa shower control did not correctly temper the water.  I was so frustrated with AB&K's performance I called in a reputable plumbing company to look at the problem.  While the plumber I hired was checking the shower he showed me that the tile behind the shower handle was incorrectly installed and that it was almost impossible to complete a simple repair of a part that is guranteed by Kohler.  He showed me Kohlers installation guide and it was clear no tile should have been placed over the body of the shower mixing valve. This again is AB&K not paying attention to detail and having one person do all the work.

We began to work with AB & K in February, 2012 on a complete remodeling of our kitchen:  new cabinets, counters, tiled back-splash, sink, rolling island and floor.  Jill, our designer, had a good sense of style and color coordination, making many suggestions that we ultimately used.  The initial quoting process was a little rocky as I kept finding errors in the quote (e.g. wrong items listed, the same item included in the cost two and three times, incomplete references to material types, etc.).  I spent a lot of time get these items corrected.  They quoted the project at a little over $30,000 which we felt to be reasonable.  When we came in to sign the contracts, we were informed that they had made a mistake and had forgotten to quote the cabinet doors (a pretty major oversight).  They should have informed us of this as soon as they knew instead of waiting until we were seated at the office to sign contracts.  The new quote was over $40,000, which did not even include appliances (an increase of $10,000  which is a pretty big oversight).  By this time we had invested a lot of time and effort in settling on a design and were excited to get started.  We decided to continue with the project anyway.  Despite the feeling a ?bait and switch? had been pulled on the price, AB & K seemed to have a good reputation and was highly rated on Angie?s List (on which we relied heavily).  However, I was now alerted to potential problems and began watching all the details even closer than before.  This is something I had not expected would be so necessary when you hire professionals and pay that kind of money for a job. 
 
During the final negotiations, I raised questions about the type of casters that would be used for the rolling island.  I was assured that they would be ?nice? casters and would be properly rated for the load.  The island, made with solid wood sides and doors, with pull-out shelves and Corian top surface was to be used for storing large pans, etc. This would be a heavy item and the casters needed to be sized properly.  I asked for details on exactly what would be used.  When they provided this information, amid the standard ?trust us, we do this all the time?, I found out that they were not consistent with the requirements for the Mannington Adura floor that had been proposed and had to work even harder to get guarantees that the casters would meet those requirements (though the first ones proposed clearly did not).  I was alarmed that AB & K was not aware of the proper requirements for casters used on this type of floor, but as I will recount later, there is a LOT about this floor that ultimately caused problems.
 
The installation started on May 14, 2012 and was scheduled to be completed by about mid-June.  The initial demolition phase went as planned and on schedule.  The installation proceeded steadily, but very slowly.  Only one person (Rich) was assigned to do the whole job, though he occasionally had a helper (Len?).  The installation of the cabinets was very professionally done.  Rich?s wood-working skills were exemplary. 
 
The first major problem came when the valance over the sink was installed.  It was completely the wrong design ? not at all what had been proposed and sketched.  Even worse, the cabinets abutting the valance on both sides were fabricated (edge rounding, etc.) to match the errant valance design, presenting a big problem to work around for any new design.  While working this out, we discovered that the cabinet maker had provided AB & K with a very detailed set of designs for all the cabinets, including the valance.  These plans were never shown to us.  Had they been, we would have caught the problem before they fabricated / installed this piece.  Jill should have made us aware that these drawings existed and gone over them with us before they were made!  AB & K helped design a new valance to replace the first one.  However, due to the flawed first design, the appearance of the second valance had to be compromised to cover for the design flaws and to hide the installation holes in the cabinets from the first design.  In the end, the design was barely acceptable and we felt forced to make the compromise.  Replacement of the valance added about 5 additional weeks to the project (mostly waiting for the replacement to arrive).  The cabinets themselves are very nice.  It was a shame this detail detracts from the look we were trying to achieve. 
 
Counter tops, sink, plumbing and electrical were all installed without a major hitch.  Only two ?can? lights were originally planned for the ceiling for the whole kitchen.  The electrical installer advised me that this was pretty inadequate for the space, which I had also questioned during the design phase.  We decided to install an additional 3 ?cans?, and I am very glad I did.  This was another flaw in the design that I had expected the designer to be more astute about.
 
The floor that was chosen was from the Mannington Adura line.  This is a vinyl product about 1/4 inch thick.  The sample we were shown was mounted to a heavy board and it was not made clear that the ?backer board? was not part of the product that would be installed.  I was very disappointed when I learned this later.  Adura comes in two types:  one that is installed by gluing it down and another called ?lock solid? that has locking tabs milled into all four edges to keep the panels locked together.  We were not made aware of the choice.  They initially installed the glued-down version, which was horribly botched.  Almost immediately after installation, the panels separated along several parallel seams and the floor looked horrible.  The installer (Rich) had admitted that he had never installed this type of floor before, but had ?watched the videos? (YouTube?) and it seemed easy enough.  Obviously, not the right way to learn to install this type of floor!  AB & K agreed that the whole floor needed to be replaced and this time the more expensive ?lock-solid? type would be used.  By the time this was done, it was mid-August.  Two days later I found a large wavy shoe-print embedded in the surface of a plank right in the middle of the floor.  The shoe print was a manufacturing flaw and could not be washed off.  AB & K sent a person to disassemble a portion of the floor to replace the panel.  While doing so, he found two other flawed panels in the same area and replaced them.  The flawed panel should have been a red flag.  Another two days later I found another shoe print of the same type in another area of the floor.  I then got a bright light and went over every panel in the floor, finding about 15 additional flawed panels, all over the floor.  The installer was obviously not paying attention to the quality of the panels as he installed them.  AB & K agreed to remove the sections of floor and replace them again, which they did in mid-September.  However, the installer (Mark) hammered some of the panels in place, which we found out later damaged the panels.  By mid-October, the ends of the panels that had been hammered had separated from the next panel leave 1/8 gaps all over the floor (about 25 places).  Again, totally unacceptable for a new floor!  They came out to re-install the floor, but had a flawed batch of material that left uneven gaps at the end of every panel and an annoying raised edge at that point.  The attempt had to be aborted.  I spent all of November in discussions with AB & K about the problems, culminating in a meeting at my home in late November with the installer, the owner of AB & K and the distributor of the Mannington product.  It was determined that the entire floor would be replaced AGAIN.&nbs

I can't say enough good things about Molly and the team from AB&K. They were absolutely fabulous to work with and got the job done quickly. We are still enjoying the minor upgrade to our kitchen and thinking about contracting with them again for more improvements.
 
What we liked most was that the team was open and honest with us about ways to save costs if we were willing to do a little work, which we did. We thoroughly looked through the gallery on their website to see the other kitchen improvements they made, and we were highly impressed. They even offered to have us call some customers if we needed to. Very happy customers!