We did a complete kitchen remodel with Paradise Builders. It involved taking down a load bearing wall and a half-wall, which didn't run a full floor to ceiling. We ended up with a really great room. It was an open concept kitchen. They cleaned up after themselves and arrived on time when we got to communicating.
There was one little snafu from a subcontractor, a drywaller, when he made a right hand corner that was not square. When it was discovered, they wanted us to take and send pictures of it, but I'm a tech dummy and didn't have the time to do it. The painter was coming, and that was our big concern, so we had the drywaller come back out, but he just said it could be covered. When the painter came, Mark, the foreman, saw the drywall and called back a different drywaller from the same place, who did the work to fix it at their expense. There wasn't even a delay that held anyone else up. The electrician was also really good and made really good suggestions.
Paradise Builders said the work would be done in six weeks, and it was done in six weeks. The work was done by Halloween, and I joked to them that if it wasn't done by Thanksgiving, I'd bring my family of 12 or so people to eat with them at their house.
We literally just picked them out of the blue at the 2011 NARI show. We took a pig in a poke. It was between Paradise Builders and another remodeling company out here in Oconomowoc that we had worked with locally. I liked Paradise's design better. It was very open, they made a few changes at our suggestion, and they were just easy to work with.
I felt like Keith always listened to our budget needs and was willing to design around a limited budget. We got to a point where he said to just pick what we want and he'd work backwards with price. For example, I really like cherry cabinets, but we couldn't afford them, so we went to cherry stained maple instead. Keith called the company, and they said we could order those, but when he put in the order they didn't do them anymore. Still, they said they would honor their word, and they gave us cherry wood at a maple price.
I couldn't imagine what the kitchen design would look like beforehand, but now I love it. They really sold us on it. I'm so happy with it. I can stand at the island stove and see my family and the TV. I'm part of everything now. And throughout, there were only two weeks where I was without access to the sink. They really worked around that problem, because I have grandchildren in and out. They also worked around our baby grand piano as well, which was a challenge with the hardwood. I'm very, very satisfied.
more