Kitchen/Bath Renovation Shout Out

We’ve just completed a full gut renovation of a our kitchen and an adjoining bathroom in our 1901 townhouse.
We found so many of our trades and suppliers here on brownstoner, so i’m excited to spread the good word on a few.

Contractor:
Mentor Frangu / Altina Tile Care – 917-692-6234
Mentor was recommended by a few people around here. We got 4 bids and Mentor’s was one of the lowest…we got such a good vibe from him and wanted someone trustworthy since we weren’t going to be around during the day…he did an amazing job! he is the nicest most conscientious, trustworthy person, and didn’t nickel and dime us for every little (or big) change.
he brought many suggestions and ideas, especially when the demolition revealed cut beams and a host of other problems. He dealt with our architects and other trades in the kindest most respectful manner and was always available when he was needed. He was on site every day with his 2 workers, cleaned up before they left, and doesn’t work on multiple jobs at the same time.
I trusted them all totally. We had a 2 week break in our renovation when various materials were late… i was never worried that he wouldn’t come back to finish everything out. If something was incorrect he gladly fixed it without a fuss.
I feel so lucky to have found him. he and his guys were a true pleasure to work with!

Electrician:
M&N High Tech 646-226-4575
The most promp/ontime trade i’ve ever dealt with and a truly good guy as well. a total professional and does great work to boot.

More…

AC:
Weston brothers
Very organized and gave us a great price and alot of good, sound advice without ripping us off.

Cabinets:
Kitchen cabinets-
Scherr’s Cabinets & Doors : www.scherrs.com
We were originally thinking of going the ikea route… but wanted boxes that are made better, sizes that actually fit our kitchen and everything painted gray. The solution? Scherrs Ready to Assemble cabinets from North Dakota! I can’t say enough about what a great decision this was. We got FULLY CUSTOM cabinets painted a color of our choice for an unreal price…along with some of THE BEST customer service i’ve ever encountered. I’m not kidding. Scherr’s built RTA cabinets based on our architects drawings, with a few rounds of shop drawing revisions, delivered everything flat and we assembled (as easy as ikea only with better materials). There were a few doors that needed to be redone based on our error… they gladly redid them and worked with us when i even wanted to switch all of our drawer glides…and credited me for the ones i returned. Truly amazing people to work with. And the price was bananas for the full custom cabs we got.
They even created some funky pieces based on my ideas like sheet pan slots etc., pullouts, and extra storage above the fridge.
I am so excited to recommend them as they are true craftsman and the nicest people (seems like a theme on this reno).

Bathroom cabinets-
KF Cabinets 718-237-5800 (3rd ave/union st)
jason and his guys built 2 custom bathroom pieces for us…a vanity and a storage unit both topped with caesarstone. these were based on our architects drawings and were odd sizes with custom paint color. they were so nice to deal with and kept us in the loop, even emailing photos of things in progress.
at the last minute we even asked them to build our 8 foot long floating shelves out of furniture grade plywood which had a funky install due to some very specific brackets. these babies are about 2 inches think, and weigh a ton and these guys did a great job in just a few days.

Tiles/Countertops:
Galactic Tile 718-768-6060
Andy at Galactic is always our first stop for tile….they had a great selection of more modern, interesting tiles, as well as a bunch of more simple styles. our shower’s oversized subway tiles came from them as well as our Caesarstone countertop. great guys to work with.
Cancos:
we got our bathroom floor tiles and oversized backsplash tiles from cancos…a little bit of drama with orders coming in late but otherwise a good selection and good people to deal with.

Architects:
Abruzzo Bodziak Architects 347-763-0093 Degraw street
amazing architects…young couple with great innovative ideas. they constantly impressed with creative materials suggestions, presenting multiple ideas/drawings for everything, spent hours and hours with us brainstorming, and came up with some of the most unique, and cool lighting.
They spent a good deal of time on site problem solving and just enjoyed seeing things come together.

The biggest problem trade on our renovation was dealing with WindowsWeAre…who are recommended on this site…i have no idea why! the only good part of the experience was measuring/consultaion…and then it all went badly from there. Got a quick estimate at first, then the measurements were lost, a revised estimate took 3 months to obtain, they had to come and remeasure, the windows we got were not great and 2 months late, they had all the wrong hardware (still waiting for them to fix some…some we have to ‘live with’), the backdoor we ordered was a freaking disaster and was months late, the doorhandle was wrong twice, and we had to have the installer redo the door flashing with the correct color. i called these guys frequently (they rarely called me, even when they knew things were going to be 2 months late) and spoke to them more than i did anyone else on my job and this was a minor part of our renovation.
i can go on and on.
i feel bad calling them out because through the whole thing they were generally nice but the mistakes were getting comically ridiculous.

i blogged the whole renovation…you can check out more photos and more details there. feel free to ask for more info! i’m glad to share it and get some great people more business.