Stonehearth Remodeling

From the first planning meeting with Mike, to the project phase and completion: Jenna, Shawn and "Pip" delivered a high quality professional result for our home. My wife and I could not be happier: Stonehearth Remodeling turned our dream into a reality! I would not hesitate to recommend them to friends and family and we would not hesitate to use them in the future. I can not say enough about how impressed we are by their services and "can do" attitude. I would rate our experience an A+

We hired StoneHearth for our kitchen remodeling project and everything turned out GREAT! My wife and I had been talking and planning this project for a couple of years so had a lot of specific goals including sourcing the wood for the cabinets and floor from a friend of ours who has a farm and sawmill. The people at StoneHearth listened to our plans & goals and didn’t immediately say “no” but said they would see what could be done. They didn’t dismiss our ideas like some contractors we met. In the end StoneHearth was the only contractor who was willing to include our wood in the project as well as the other aspects of our plan. During the project all the milestones were met on time and as specified. StoneHearth has access to excellent tradesmen who did great work. Everything fits, functions and looks terrific. Communication and coordination was masterfully managed via email, text and a contractor website where everyone could review milestones, emails, photos and documents. True transparency! This is the first project where I can say that everything completed as specified, on schedule and we were still good friends when we reached the finish line. I give StoneHearth my highest recommendation. They are true professions!

Four stars for the finished product. Two stars for dealing with StoneHearth. Would not do business with them again. The same message has been shared with numerous friends and family members looking for a remodeling contractor referral. This was a complete remodel of the main floor including kitchen, family room and bathroom. The end result was good and met our expectations. A few sub-contractors to recognize for their work: Jeremy at Pride Electric was particularly good. Travis at UB Hardwoods was another good subcontractor to work with. The drywall and paint crew were also particularly good. From the design perspective, Cathy listened to what we wanted and provided good input to make the final design a very workable plan. I only wish the other folks at StoneHearth paid attention to Cathy’s thoughtfully created design. Failing to follow the plan is where things fell apart. The main issue is how Greg, the owner of StoneHearth, handles change orders. It must be a very lucrative part of his business because he is very secretive and protective of how he handles change orders. Three particular instances where oversight, omission or carelessness by StoneHearth resulted in errors that ended up as change orders. These were not changes I initiated, yet it resulted in significant cost increases for me. They were a direct result of StoneHearth not following the design or not including what had been specified verbally, in writing and in pictures in their quote. It was not until towards the end when I found out these three change orders were not simply the incremental cost (plus equitable fees, overhead, etc.) of fixing their errors as expected. These change orders had been marked up between 300% and 600% of the incremental cost! When I asked Greg multiple times to sit down to review the documentation and explain his change order process so I could understand how he arrived at these costs, he refused. Instead, he offered a significant amount of money if I would write a five star Google review. I politely declined. As a last ditch effort, he offered 4X his initial bribe for me to write a five star Google review (Yes, I have it all in writing) and I once again politely refused. Trusting who you do business with is especially important to me. At the end of the day, StoneHearth is not a company you can trust to be transparent and forthcoming when it comes to change orders.

Stonehearth did a great job on our project (full kitchen and two bathroom remodel). They put together fantastic set of designs, reviewed the options and helped bring the plans from paper to reality. They were professional and had great communication at all stages. I particularly liked the app-based communication that made it easy to keep track of everything. Our project was over several weeks/months, and they did a great job to schedule everything out so that we always had a bathroom available and kept their schedule. Every project has changes that come up once the walls are down, but they did a great job of explaining the situation and keeping things under control. They coordinated contractors that did great tile work, cabinetry, flooring and electrical. I always felt they had a good schedule and kept things moving on plan. They really went above and beyond in helping address an issue that came up after the job closed, which really showed their commitment to keeping their customers happy. I look forward to working with Stonehearth again when we're able to move on to our next project. We love how our projects turned out, and would definitely recommend Stonehearth Remodeling and Greg Oothoudt as reliable for getting a good job done.

Thank you Stonehearth for making our dreams become a reality. We knew remodeling our home was going to be a big job and something that we couldn’t do on our own. Your interior designer, Cathy, came up with a functional design for a dark and dingy basement and a main floor bathroom that that was smaller than a telephone booth. There were so many obstacles to finishing off our basement and remodeling our main floor bathroom, like demolishing an original chimney from the 40’s, removing walls, a random window in our main floor shower, removal of old plumbing and updating our electrical. Stonehearth made the process easy. Stonehearth was in constant contact with us, regarding any issues that came up. By using their CoConstruct App, we were able to know the daily schedule, who’d be working at our house and what was completed each day. It was also an easy way to keep in contact with Stonehearth, helpful to keep track of our budget and any change orders. All of Stonehearth’s employees were so extremely helpful, even when we felt stressed, they were there to calm us down. On demolition day for our main floor bathroom, we forgot to check the schedule and it was a surprise when we found out it the bathroom was being torn apart. What could have been a stressful situation was made easy with Stonehearth’s employees. All of their employees and subcontractors were extremely trustworthy. After meeting them, I wasn’t nervous about having strangers in our home while we were at work. Now that we are sitting in our remodeled house, it still feels like a dream. Stonehearth, thank you for all of your help and giving us a basement that is functional, yet fabulous and a spacious main floor bathroom.

We worked with Stonehearth to design & build our kitchen, and change a few items throughout our house. The work involved gutting the kitchen to the studs, opening a wall to have an arch open to the dining room, and replacing/relocating all appliances, sink, and lighting. They also converted an awkward pantry into a useful entryway closet. They added recessed lighting in our living room, and installed ceiling fans in our living and dining rooms. Stonehearth and their subcontractors installed wood flooring in the kitchen to match existing throughout the house, and sanded & stained it all to match. They installed new painted cabinets (including glass front upper cabinets), countertops and handmade tile backsplash as well. Start to finish, the process took approximately eight months. This included going through the entire design process, through signing the contract for the remodel, to final inspection. The process took longer than we were initially hoping, for various reasons. However, Greg worked with us to overcome the issues and get our project moving along. Greg really earned our trust, and we felt like we were genuinely being taken care of. The work quality and attention to detail of everyone who worked on our project was excellent. We had true craftspeople who cared about the work they did. Communication about the project schedule was posted online for us and we generally knew what part of the project was happening when. If the schedule needed to change, Jenna, the project manager, was proactive about letting us know what was happening. Our kitchen is small and we chose not to expand the footprint. The new design is very efficient with every cabinet space well thought out and ample countertop space. We cook in it daily, and are very happy with the function and usability of the space. We’re thrilled with the end result! The kitchen and other changes look like they belonged with the house from the start.

Work Order: Remodel kitchen and dining room My kitchen remodel was a total gut job of my small galley kitchen and the tear down of a wall between kitchen and living room. Kitchen remake included; semi custom wood stained kitchen cabinets, build of new peninsula between kitchen and living room, granite counter top and backsplash, new fridge and dishwasher, all new electrical wiring with new light fixtures, laying new subfloor and luxury vinyl plank flooring. (I also love the new sink and facet!) The dining room included tear up of carpet and laying the same new flooring and a new chandelier in dining room. First of all I will say that I LOVE everything about it and would not change a thing! The beautiful results are due to all the excellent people at Stonehearth. Starting with Chad the sales/estimator. He could see the big picture and moved me along in my initial plans. I will say I had planned on spending a lot less than I did but I am glad I invested in the quality. Doing less would have been costly but a minimal upgrade from what I had in my small galley kitchen and not a good investment. Cathy the designer was fantastic she could see improvements way beyond what I envisioned. I would absolutely say do NOT even consider a kitchen remodel with out her services! Her keen eye made all my choices so much easier and beautiful. Her detailed kitchen plan and computer generated pictures helped me see what could be. The project manager Shawn was the primary person responsible for keeping the whole project on schedule, at several points he had to jump in and do the work to keep us going. In addition he was a pleasure to have around and was gracious in ensuring my 2 cats were comfortable and safe. The owner Greg came to consult with cabinet installers when an issue arose. Jenna communicated with me and had the maintenance of the project plan and the ordering of my choices with vendors. Bonnie has communicated with me and was on time sending out those invoices on time!

We had a whole home remodel done by Stonehearth Remodeling. While the result is a nice remodel and we love our home, it didn’t come without many difficulties. We put our trust in Stonehearth from the day they came to our home to meet with us. During the remodel/construction phase there were many issues that came up. In the beginning, we were told that we would always know what was happening at our home, who would be in our home doing work, and that we would be provided a timeline of the project. That was rarely the case. There were times we would stop over at our home and workers would be there that we didn’t know about or what they were working on. We were not given a timeline as to when certain selections were needed, until right before they were needed. This put a lot of pressure on us as well as our work schedules. Stonehearth hired a cabinet maker and a painter that they had never used before. As a result, the paint needed to be redone in almost the entire home which pushed back some of the timeline. We have had numerous issues with the cabinets due to inferior quality. Greg often referred to our project as “a project of this magnitude” as it was such a large project. Therefore, we were not sure why he would choose a cabinet maker or painter that he had never used before. In fact, we are still waiting many months later, to have our floor fixed again. Communication was an issue and not all calls nor emails were responded to in a timely manner. We did feel that the way Stonehearth kept track of the budget was near nonexistent. We would receive invoices for items we had already paid for. Many of these were thousands of dollars in duplicate invoices. We found many errors that were made this way. We kept track of every check we wrote for each invoice and we had to constantly meet with Greg to sort out the numbers. We felt that that was something that should have been taken care of on their end even through a simple Excel Spreadsheet. Instead we spent hours and hours finding errors and trying to get them fixed. This was very stressful, and we found that we had to keep track of the whole project ourselves while Stonehearth tried to make numbers make sense but could not. We would also stop over at the home during construction and found contractors using items from our garage and not their own. Our very large ladder went missing on one of the days the painters were there. One of the contractors took our air compressor from our garage and brought it in our home to use it without asking. He ended up breaking it. It is covered in paint spray. Another contractor brought his dogs and kept them on a leash on our yard and didn’t clean up after them. That was very disgusting. This same contractor said he could get his work done a lot faster if we would let him keep his van (with his dogs) on or property and stay there until his work was done as he was homeless. You can’t make these things up. The attention to detail was lacking which we did not expect from Stonehearth. For example, we had to point out many areas in which painting needed to be redone that would have been missed during some of the walkthroughs had we not pointed them out. The project ended up being way over the initial budget. We understood that the final amount could go up due to other things we wanted to add, however the final total was way over the initial amount we had spoken about. We were in initial stages of putting in a bar in the basement but had not made a final decision. Plumbing and painting were done before we gave final authorization making us feel pressured to finish the basement. We had stopped over one day to find a plumber had put in plumbing for a wet bar before we ever said it was ok. We understand that doing a whole home remodel would be stressful for anyone. We interviewed over 15 professional remodelers before we chose Stonehearth. We were hoping that Stonehearth would assist in making the remodel process a smooth one. We expected some bumps during the process. We knew it would not be easy. This was not the case with our experience with Stonehearth. We hope this review can assist them in their future remodels and it can help improve some of the many issues we had with this company.

We hired Stonehearth to remodel our kitchen. We loved the entire team of professionals! They were a joy to work with. They were open to our suggestions and listened to what we really wanted. We loved the design that Cathy came up with. Shawn and Jenna were very good at answering questions. And Chad...what can we say about Chad?!?! He was a total joy to work with and we look forward to hiring them for more projects. Greg has a great team here and our kitchen turned out far better than we ever expected it to. Would definitely recommend these guys to anyone who is looking to remodel.

This company was so accommodating. Jenna and Bonnie were pleasant and helpful. I needed help with various jobs around the house - from finding out what was wrong with a downspout to opening and adjusting a sticky French door. There was one job that they could not do, but they made arrangements for me to contact another company. I would definitely hire them again!

Greg and his crew exceeded our expectations. We left on Saturday morning on vacation and when we returned all of the work was complete, everything was neat, tidy and in place. Very nice service before, during and after the repairs.

Greg was very professional in all that he did for us. He kept us informed on the entire process of roofing our church facility from the damage that the wind had caused. He met with the insurance estimator and handled all of the paperwork for us, making my job easier by his hard work. He found other areas that desperately needed work that the insurance company was not held responsible. It was work that we knew needed to be done. Greg was able to combine this work with the insurance repairs to help us keep our costs down. We were glad to work with Greg and highly recommend him to others.