Do not hire this man to handle anything you care about. He is long on promise and short on delivery. He is nothing but a middle-man and adds no value. In our case, his inaction and carelessness have caused us great delay, anxiety, and expense.
Don’t be led on by this man. He advertises heavily on the web using multiple websites to promote his solo business, claiming to handle everything from home design and remodeling to bathrooms and countertops to cabinet refinishing, We hired him to refinish our kitchen cabinets.
When he arrived to provide an estimate, he seemed very knowledgeable and told us he would provide all the work we needed, including repainting of all our cabinets and replacement of some damaged drawer bottoms and drawer boxes. We agreed to what we now realize was a premium price for the work, but we were so impressed with his promises, we believed we were in competent hands.
We were surprised when his crew arrived early one morning a few days later, without notice, to begin work dismantling and removing the cabinets for repair and repainting at their shop. We were not informed that they would be arriving, and Jerry was not with them. The workers said they had been instructed by Jerry to come to begin the work, but he had not informed us of this either by phone or text message. When I called his cell phone to find out why we had not been informed, there was no answer, and his voicemail box was full so I couldn’t leave a message. I sent a text, but there was no immediate response. This should have been our first warning sign, but we accepted it as a minor communication error and looked forward to the excellent outcome we had been promised.
The crew (of 2) that painted the cabinet frames in place in our kitchen were careful to cover our floors and appliances and seemed to do a good job, but the result was not the smooth lacquer surface we were promised, and we had to demand that they sand and finish the surfaces. Again, Jerry was nowhere to be found and never returned to the job site to supervise or consult with us on the delivered work.
The process took much longer than we anticipated, mostly due to miscommunication between Jerry and his workers, We would tell Jerry something that the workers claim they were never told, or Jerry would give conflicting instructions to his crew without telling us. Throughout the process, we had agreed with Jerry that all work on the drawers and cabinet doors would be completed at their shop, and the only work on premises would be the installation of the completed refinished pieces. His workers returned on at least 2 separate occasions with materials that were not completed and had to be returned to the shop for corrections. Again, we never saw Jerry again after he sold us on the job, and his supervision of the work was effectively nil. Worse yet, when we could get him to answer his phone or respond to text messages, he would blame his workers rather than take responsibility for the problems.
The final straw came when, after nearly 3 weeks of no follow-up about our installation, we demanded that Jerry get the cabinets installed. A new worker arrived the following day with the doors and drawers, but no repairs had been done. We called Jerry and demanded he come to the house to see the problem for himself. When he finally arrived, he said that the repairs would be done in-place, and not at the shop as we had agreed. Throughout the ordeal, Jerry had provided no supervision of the job, no consistent communication with us or his work crew, and nothing but empty promises. We fired Jerry and sacrificed our deposit rather than continuing with him, and had to arrange for a different company to do the work he could not complete.
It was only after letting Jerry go that we discovered we were missing two cabinets that we had given to his crew for refinishing. These were two cabinets we had on the wall above our laundry that we had removed intact. When we reached out to him to have those cabinets returned, he informed us that his worker had disposed of them and that we had instructed him to do so! This is a blatant lie. Why would we give our cabinets to a refinishing professional with instructions to dispose of them? We can throw stuff away without professional assistance. Either Jerry is lying about the cabinets being trashed, or his mismanagement is even more unforgivable. So now we are missing two custom cabinets (I guess we can file a police report for theft?), we still have to pay someone else to refinish our cabinets (those that were returned), and Thanksgiving is passed and Christmas is coming, Thanks, Jerry!
