Kehlnhofer Custom Cabinets

Description of Work: Built custom bedroom dressers and office cabinetry.

Description of Work: Built and applied custom cabinets. Terrible work and customer service. Doesn't honor his guarantee.

Description of Work: Brian Kehlnhofer, of Kehlnhofer Customer Cabinets served as the GC for a complete kitchen remodel in my home. In addition to the kitchen remodel, stripping of old wall paper, texturizing, and painting of the foyer, hallways adjacent to kitchen, laundry room, and upper floor hallways and two bathrooms was performed. The 3/4 Bathroom adjacent to the kitchen was also remodeled. | |There are so many things to cover. I will do my best to be fair and accurate. | |Brian Kehlnhofer secured subcontractors to perform all work except the making of the cabinets and bath vanity. This included electrical, flooring, carpentry, tile, painting, etc. The work schedule was smooth, efficient, and flowed nicely to allow for all the work to be done within 3-4 weeks as promised*. | |The quality of some of the subcontractors work is found lacking. | |For example, there are electrical outlets in the kitchen that are not flush on the same plane, and were measured off the old floor level rather than the new floor level that was not yet installed. A minor oversight, but, lead to greater problems that were revealed over time. | |Flooring: The flooring remains to be the biggest disappointment. The Interior Designer and I agreed on all colors and materials to be installed in my new kitchen. The floor was to be a dark walnut stain on hardwood to set off the custom color of the cabinets and pick up on the color of the granite. One board in the middle of the kitchen floor looked odd, so the contractor replaced it, but, in so doing, made it worse as the board he used had a frayed edge and was splitting. His fix to that was a little wood glue and dark marker (sharpie marker). | |When it came time for the subcontractor to stain the wood floors, Brian nor the ID were present and I was left with the subcontractor forcing me to choose a stain color that was not the already agreed upon color. I was in a hurry to make an appointment (that I as compelled to miss). I was a complete novice in this sort of decision, and did not know the difference as I had no sample of the agreed upon color to compare against the ones offered by the subcontractor. I was forced to choose a color that turned out to be completely wrong and almost perfectly matched the color of the cabinets making the kitchen seem all washed out and uniform. I almost cried. I called the Interior Designer and Brian both who came out the next day and they agreed with me that the floor was all wrong. It would be fixed. Great! However, the flooring subcontractor put up a stink about it all, but, eventually agreed to redo the color. But, this time, Brian came up with the stain color to try to make it better. It did not go over well, and eventually they found the right dark walnut stain to do my floor yet a third time. | |The flooring subcontractor had to sand the entire floor again and restain it. This time, the floor looked like it should have from the beginning. | |However, the appliance people scratched the floor moving the refrigerator having refused to use the special boards that Brian supplied for such purposes. Brian made a claim to the appliance people, and eventually they agreed to have the floor serviced (by the same sub-contractor) to have the scratches fixed. Well, the fix for this made the floor even more horrible. The sub-contractor sanded down, yet again!, the middle of the kitchen, and one lane the width of sander into the eat-in section of the kitchen, and down the hallway that leads into the garage. He then restained this section one more time. I now have a section of my floor into the eat in area that looks like a bowling alley lane as the stain and finish do not match perfectly, same with the hallway. The crappy job shows and I have to look at every day. To top it all off, or, rather, to lie underneath it all, NO SUB-FLOOR WAS INSTALLED. My husband did not know about this oversight as the floor was being installed. There are obvious creaks and gaps showing up on my kitchen floor. My 18 year old son is fond of pointing them out. That is how obvious these gaps are. | |Moving on: The bathroom that was remodeled turned out beautifully. This is probably the only place that I have no complaint. | |The stripping of old wallpaper and texturizing of the walls in the foyer, hallways, laundry room, upper hallways, and two bathrooms were discussed and agreed upon. When it came time for the upper bathrooms to be done, suddenly these were not included. Especially the master bath. Well, since the contract did not spell out in details of what was covered except in a general sense, we split the difference on the extra cost of the master bath. We also paid for all the interior intercom and radio speaker boxes to be removed from each room they had been installed in as this work came up as the job was being completed. We had no problems with this work and extra cost. Each room looked updated and beautifully done. The minor complaints come from the lack of caulking in seams and woodwork that was painted that would have made the newly painted wood framing and painted walls pop like they should. The other thing would be that the use of the texturizing material without covering tubs with cloth or plastic and such stripped the tubs of a fine finish that leaves it looking dull. Who knew? | |Carpentry: The general carpentry work that was done was great. Mike was a genial man who obviously cared for his work. There were some things that became obvious as the fine work of detailed work arose that there was a miscommunication between Brian and Mike. | |Brian drew the design (with the ID) the back splash that was to be installed in the kitchen. This was supposed to be the beautiful accent that made my kitchen pop! | |The backsplash has two component parts. Regular Italian ceramic stone tile 2x2 with a special accent strip of special Italian glass framed with pencil rail that set it off. The first ceramic backsplash tile that Mike installed was wrong (it was too light in color). No one had checked the tile against the sample once again. It all had to be removed from the wall which damaged some of the drywall. This left an obvious bump out as Mike had to repair the huge hole that was created when he had to pry off the wrong tile. | |Brian mis-measured the larger designed space above the cook top and under the hood. This area had to be added to make it square as Mike had to dumpster dive to recover the extra pieces of glass tile that had been thrown away. He did do his best to make it not look like a piece part job. However, by this time, everyone's nerves were frayed as I was increasingly upset by the poor quality of work that was being revealed. Mike was offended, I was upset, Brian was moving on to other jobs and attempting to marginalize the end of my complaints. | |Needless to say, as we live in our kitchen daily, there are things we see that reveal that the quality of work promised is not what it should be. I will offer you a caveat. Brian Kehlnhofer (and his wife) were friends of mine; which is why I chose them to do the work. This was the first time ever that we had taken on a contractor to do work in our home. I will say that Brian did try to fix anything that came up, worked with the subs to get things done on time and generally wanted to make it all right. But, in my humble opinion, the job was bigger than he could chew and dealing with 4-5 different subcontractors without being on top of them caused a lot of problems that could have been avoided (flooring being the biggest) had Brian taken full ownership of their work. I stated numerous times I am a complete novice and know nothing of work such as this. Numerous times I was put in awkward, decision making positions that I assumed had already been made by the Brian and the Interior Decorator. | |But, as I stated above, we now see parts of the cabinetry (which is his specialty?) that are not flush, stain that has rubbed off in places, misaligned parts of the cabinet outer walls, hardware that we cannot figure out to adjust to maintain the "quiet kitchen" that was promised, etc. Seemingly minor things, but, when you spend $50,000 in a time when the economy is rough, and you believe what you've been promised because you decide to give the work to friends, it is doubly disappointing to feel taken advantage of. I paid Brian on time for all the work completed. I just feel that I cannot ever call him again for anything as trust has been broken. The final work was finished in April of 2012. | | | | |

Description of Work: Designed and installed all new cabinets for kitchen

Description of Work: Built a locker system, laundry sink cabinet, and installed crown molding on existing cabinets

Description of Work: Built and installed a custom A/V center

Description of Work: We used Kehlnhofer Custom Cabinets to do custom built-in cabinetry in our rec room.

Description of Work: I used Brian of Kehlnhofer Custom Cabinets a couple of months ago. I had some bathroom cabinets done by him.

Description of Work: Brian helped design the new kitchen layout. He also removed existing cabinetry and built and installed new custom cabinets.

Description of Work: He built a huge cabinet out of cherry wood. It is about 11 ft. long, 8 ft. high, and 2 ft. deep. He built it at his own workshop in several peices and then assembled it here. It houses shelves, stereo equipment, a television and a closet for coats.

Description of Work: Custom built entire set of maple kitchen cabinets including pantry; removed existing cabinets and appliances; and then installed new cabinetry.