THE DESIGN CENTER

At the last minute, we were told we had to pick out new shower surround tile, new fireplace surround tile, and new carpet as they were no longer available. We picked out new material to keep construction moving so we could close our mortgage on time. Jeremy made no attempt to apologize or correct what was clearly a mistake on their side. The house was finished, we moved in. Since then we have noticed a lot of poor workmanship. Grout lines with variable thicknesses, grout lines not matching up, crooked tile in the shower recess, vertical wall tile on different planes, and no grout was sealed (apparently an extra we were never offered). I was told by Jeremy these things should have been noticed on final walk through and he wouldn't fix anything unless I paid for it. This is all within the warranty period of a year. Since then, the builder has agreed to cover the highly visible fireplace surround. Everything else is on us. So to summarize, we bought a new house, paid extra for carpet and tile we didn't want and was poorly installed, told we should have caught the mistakes before we moved in, and that they would correct any mistake but we would have to pay for it, again.

we ended up having them come back to redo areas that were chipped and uneven. Then we had them out to seal areas that you could see were not sealed. We hired them because we could not get our dishwasher back in after hardwood floors were installed by another vender. They agreed to raise our counters and put down the granite tile, get us flush registers for our hardwood floors and new knobs for our cabinets. We were not charged for the registers but the manager Jeremy took a piece of our flooring to match up and never followed through with the registers or return the wood. The biggest problem was they did not raise the counters as we had contracted with them. The person doing the job said that they wouldn't have looked good. he made the decision and did not consult with us or the Design Center They did offer to tear it out if we demanded it. They notched out the tile to fit the dishwasher. It was as if the Design Center was at the mercy of their contractors. They did not leave enough room for our stove to go in place and scratched up the stove trying to put it back. we had to have them out to fix that. We have water spots that won't come off out 2 months later. I have not asked them to repair that. It seems as though it was not sealed properly. Greg Ashe was charming as was Jeremy. They wanted the job to be well done, but didn't have a crew that they or we could count on. Consequently it was not a smooth transaction at all.

I have worked with Greg Ash a few times. I feel his prices are reasonable, and the quality and speed of the work are excellent.