In May of 2008, we met with a designer at My Home US home renovation center in Paramus NJ to discuss what would be involved in a kitchen/laundry remodel in our historic row home in downtown Jersey City. My Home presented itself as a first class, full service renovation company taking the client from idea through full execution of the project taking care of every step along the way. We were impressed with the showroom, the variety and quality of the materials used and the professional credentials and experience of it staff. What we experienced was the complete opposite!! We paid MY Home a premium price for a first class renovation because we wanted the best service and materials and none of the agony and work that goes along with a kitchen remodel. My Home promised to take care of everything. The budget ballooned out of control and the amount of mistakes and poor quality of work was equally outrageous. Our designer disappeared from the country at the start of our project. Although their marketing literature states that once you sign the contract anything they failed to include would be provided at their cost, meaning all costs are locked. Week after week they came to us with ""change orders"", things they didn't include in the contract that they were now asking us to pay for. These were not small things that were miscellaneous in the grand scope of the design; these were major oversights that a seasoned renovator should have budgeted for. The final straw that lead us to fire My Home was when they installed our radiant heat flooring incorrectly. Basically they created a short by stapling through the heating mat and when our numerous requests to test the mat before laying very expensive tile went ignored we found out that it didn't work properly after the tile was completed. They did try to get it to work by bypassing the ground protection, which would leave us vulnerable to electrical fire (we discovered this after hiring an independent home inspection and sought legal advice). We stopped work on the project because the problems were outweighing the benefit and they hid them from us along the way. This company completely misrepresented themselves to us in person and in their brochure and we were not given the design we were promised, just a poor inferior version of it. Almost every material we ordered from them was ordered incorrectly. The excessive duration for this project is directly related to the poor communication, poor quality of work, and numerous mistakes along the way. We could never get the kitchen and laundry we were promised unless we started over. To top it off they had the nerve to take us to arbitration and put a lien on our property because we with held their last payment. Fortunately for us the arbitrator ruled in our favor and we only had to pay a small fraction of the balance that was actually owed them. We have since hired outside contractors to fix their mistakes and finish the project properly, wherever possible.
Pros: NOTHING
Cons: EVERYTHING
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