Zavaleta's Cabinets

How did it go? Not well! He took way too long, got all the money and he left us with unfinished work and poor craftsmanship. And he promised to come back and fix and didn't. And we never hear from him again. Details: First, I would not recommend Saul for any further jobs. He's a super nice guy, religious, nice family and comes off very calm and easy going. But, he's not a good time manager (probably like most mediocre contractors). He came highly recommended by our general contractor, who is one of his best friends (first warning sign we should have stayed away) from El Salvador. But, at that time, we trusted our GC. Saul promised a lot, but didn't deliver as such. His pricing isn't cheap (although not super expensive). We were sold from the referral that Saul's work has great quality--which didn't turn out to be the case. Our project dragged out for MONTHS, with him always say "I'll come in a couple of day to finish" but never did. And we had call and follow up countless times. And when we finally threaten with legal actions, he finally (and sloppily) completed the various projects. And only until afterwards when we begin to move items into these cabinets, we discovered that they were done in a hurried manner, with lots of areas not finished: paint didn't apply properly, holes drilled with lots of splinters, holes didn't line up properly, shelves crooked, more shallowed boxes so he didn't have to use a lot of materials, etc. We can go on. We had couple of other professional carpenters to examine the work afterwards, and they were all consistently surprised of the poor quality; they all objectively thought Saul used cheap materials and simply didn't pay detailed attention to a lot of parts. Another factor (which is a big lesson for us) is that Saul is based 30-40 miles away. So, for he's never motivated to make the drive to fix our issues--he even admitted that he didn't want to make multiple trips. And many times he claims he'd forget things and shows up for 10 minutes and left. And never to see again for days. This was a disaster. We documented all the poor workmanship and issues, will hire another cabinet maker to fix and complete the job, and will take him to small claims court.

Overall, pretty good craftsmanship and quality of work. The problem with Saul is his not responsive to calls and overall, does not care about a set schedule. He did not deliver on time on either of the two sets of cabinets and has yet to provide the closet doors that I paid for. I made the mistake of giving him 50% of the closet door payment in October of 2012. I am writing this review in March of 2013 and I have yet to receive my closet doors. At this point, I have lost all hope of getting the doors or recovering my money.

Great.