Jeffery Wentworth/ Cabinet Maker

Jeff told me that it would take three days for the installation. Things seemed to go well until day three or four. He then said himself that I should have probably gone with an IKEA installer because they would have known better what to do. By day five, I tried to encourage him to step up his bar so that we could bring this project to a satisfactory end. When you know someone can perform at a high level, and they intentionally choose not to, that is actually worse than someone who says they can, but actually cannot. For me, this man just decided that he was going to do what he wanted to do?making my life miserable.What that says to me is that he intentionally gave me a crappy job. And ?WHY? is my only question. I made three minor requests of Jeff to take care of during the project. One of those things being that the placement of the fridge. It needed to be pushed back far enough as to avoid hitting a brick pillar in the basement so that the door could open completely. He acted like he didn?t hear what I said. We get to day five of what was supposed to be a three-day project, and not only did my issues not get addressed, but I now have problems that should have never been an issue. Some of the cabinets are placed too closely to the appliances so that when you open them they rub. I specifically asked him why the drawers and doors slamming and popping. He said, ?That?s how the IKEA cabinets are?they?re just cheap.? When he left, I found several little hinge covers that had not been installed in any of the doors or drawers. The purpose of these is to mitigate sound and buffer. The knobs were drilled incorrectly on the doors. The diagrams show clearly how to assemble the product. They showed the knobs going in the center, but he decided to not follow the guidelines, and instead, did what he ?normally? does. Thankfully, the holes are drilled only through to the inside of every drawer and door and not straight through. He installed the wrong cabinet. I explained to him exactly what he should look for to identify the correct cabinet. When he and I both realized that he STILL installed the wrong cabinet, instead of being a person of integrity and character, and humbly installing the correct cabinet, he was determined to make the cabinet that was up there work. What he did to make it work was that he opened up the cabinet that should have been installed and cut it in order to use it as a template for matching other holes to get the other cabinets to match. After all of that, some cabinets were still longer than the others. They were clearly off. He drilled all the way through one cabinet door. By this time, in the project I began feeling like this is not going to work, and I was working up the nerve to tell him that this is not what I wanted. At the fifth day--on Friday, I told him that we needed to take a pause and really evaluate what we had going on, and then come back to discuss getting everything completed to end on a good note. By Saturday, we talked on the phone. I was trying to have a conversation about integrity and principles. He was impatient and didn?t want to hear it. He told me that he had taken a cabinet door home with him. He actually ended up holding my cabinet door hostage. He never told me that he was taking one of my doors. He told me that if I wanted the door back I would have to come and get it. I cannot speak to his custom cabinetry work. I only have experience with him installing IKEA kitchen. There was a pile of sawdust in the middle of my garage, and he was just rude. He was a jackleg of a worker on this project. He has one of those Ryobi vacuum cleaners to clean up the dust from drilling and cutting. He would not clean up after himself, but told me that I have a vacuum that I could use. When he told me that he could do the job in three days, and it takes five days to get nothing, and spending a sixth day on the phone, all to have a disagreeable experience. He actually said that he underestimated the time that it would take to finish the job, but instead of absorbing the cost of his miscalculation, he tried to get me to pay him for the extra time?saying that I owe him. I believe that he should replace my doors. It is ridiculous to have someone who has skill to do such terrible work. I cannot show this place for rent because it is not finished! IKEA is actually discontinuing this style of cabinetry, and the only stock available is what any individual store may have. It?s not a common stock item any more. So, that?s a lot of time just to locate replacements for what he damaged with drilling all of his holes, let alone paying shipping! At the end of the day, I have learned that you don?t have to be the absolute best at what you do, but INTEGRITY will be what helps you to improve and what helps you to make corrections to mistakes. He did not have integrity in this project. If you?re not a person of INTEGRITY, you?re not going to deliver your best. So the grades given here reflect the finished result.

Everything went smoothly, no bad surprises, and my husband and I are just so lucky to have found him. He has done excellent, simply superb jobs for 3 other households in our condo, as well as 3 kitchens for us. We also had him make floating shelves for us in the living room to display our porcelain collection. Jeff's business card says "Fine Work at a Fair Price," and he lives up to it. He had apprenticed for an Austrian cabinet maker and the old world tradition of fine craftsmanship shines through in his work. I feel he takes on a project not just to earn a living but to do a good job - he takes pride in his work. You can glean from his manner that he is a person of high principles; I take great comfort from his honesty and I like the feeling that he is not there to gouge me. I have had a terrible experience with Mr. Vito Casarillo of Kolb Electric who more than doubled his original charge (not estimate) of $150 for hanging a chandelier in our dining area, pretending something's not right in our ceiling that would require him to do more work, trying to extend his work hours by repeatedly going down to his truck to see if he find "the right part." I accompanied Mr. Vito Casarillo 3 times to do this so that I could let him back into our secure building with a special key and he wouldn't have to go all the way around to the lobby. Mr. Vito Casarillo didn't really get any special "right part" because he did not do any extra work to install the chandelier; in fact, it was installed badly with the electrical plates and connections showing on the ceiling instead of hiding all this inside the ceiling, plus, he left a big, gaping hole he did not even bother to patch up. This is the kind of handyman nightmare you will not even get a hint of from Jef f Wentworth. Jeff is a master artisan who pays attention to details. He works for you exclusively; he does not hire other contractors or workers and I like that because there are some good contractors out there who accept several jobs at a time and farm out the work among workers who may not be as good as him so you can end up with a slipshod job. I would like to add that I do a lot of research and canvassing before I spend my money. I am also detail-oriented and come from a family in the art world. I want to share this information about Jeff's handiwork because artistic fine work make people happy and that is something good to spread around. Also, honesty is a good quality but you would want to especially demand total honesty from people who do work for your home. Jeff has these essential qualities. Thank you, Jeff!