Nearly great semi-custom furniture!
Overall we were pleased with the quality of the furniture, however, we were not happy with the customer service and getting the actual products we ordered.
We placed a very large order nearly a year in advance (dining room table, 2 king size beds, a bunk bed system, 2 end tables, a buffet table, and 2 dressers), that included delivery and assembly to a home 3 hours away. We asked for a specific delivery date 6 weeks out for when we closed on our new house as we were having family to help with the move - however, when the time came we ended up having to bear the expense and hassle of going to his shop and picking up all the pieces and paying for movers there and again at our new home 3 hours away and assembling everything but the bunk bed system by ourselves, or else we had to wait until the following week - which would not work for family flying into town to help set up the new place.
We ordered a table that was supposed to be 38" x 100" wide, however, it was wrongly built to 36" wide - the end chairs we bought and pulled up the exact dimensions for in his shop that David wrote down, could not be pushed in, so David had to rebuild the table, however, clearly was not happy.
We ordered a bunk bed system and specifically asked for guard rails to be built around the bed for safety reasons for our 3 year old - they decided without consult to not build any rails around the ladder because it didn't 'look right'. We told him this was a safety concern. His fix was to send 2, 2x4's for us to attach to the ladder side - not quite the right look, but better than nothing. We gave him the specs for the lights we were to install for the lower bunk - he ignored those, assembled the bed, and pushed it against the wall - stating he didn't want to make a mistake. Therefore, my husband and I spent an entire day figuring out how to move this 800 pound bed system away from the wall and installed them ourselves - looked and worked perfectly fine but was extremely hard to move.
We asked for our guest bed to sit 30" in height, just like our master bed, and said that it absolutely could not be too high because our parents could not move around easily due to health issues, we all agreed that 30" high would be manageable - however, he then built the frame identical to our master but didn't take into consideration the extra thick temperpedic mattress and boxspring that we gave him the dimensions for - therefore our guest bed sits at 34" in height and our parents with major hip and knee issues cannot get in and out of the bed without a stepstool. David refused to fix this problem, said that I told him it should be just like our master bed, and told us we could personally saw off the legs if we wanted to or throw away our $400 box springs and buy a piece of plyboard - which would have made the bed too low.
I told him I wanted both master and guest bed frames to be built so that you could not see the boxsprings (because they are ugly!) - and we all agreed that if he did that we could push them up from the bottom to remove them when needed since it was an open frame, so that wouldn't be a problem. However, it was built so that 4"+ are visible - very ugly and not sure how to fix this.
My husband attempted on numerous occasions to call and email because we wanted the guest bed fixed and the guard rails for my daughter's bed - he sent the 2 x 4's relatively quickly, but refused to do anything about the guest bed saying that we told him we wanted it like the master (in total height yes!) and ignored our numerous requests to purchase the additional 2 end tables that he agreed to build for the same price as the master end tables - David ignored the calls again and again, tables were never built.
In spite of all these problems (and that on the dressers the front piece of wood on the left side of both dressers quickly warped up and now we have a significantly curved top surface for both dressers which makes me think this might be a design flaw), we still greatly love the look and the idea of supporting local builders. Therefore, against my husband's counsel, I gave David the benefit of the doubt for the poor service since he intimated that it was because his new employee quit, he started a new job, he had a new baby coming, he bought a new house and still had to sell his old house, and was just stressed out - I contacted him recently to build 2 additional tables (dining and kitchen) that would have cost well over $6000 - I asked him a simple question about the sealer (water based versus oil), and he responded defensively with something to the effect that I should go someplace else since I was clearly not happy with anything he built previously.
I told him we just thought custom furniture should be built to custom specs - however clearly not with this company and if you think so, then you're the problem! He may be fine for simple orders, but not for multiple pieces - he does not pay too much attention to details and gets upset and defensive when you call him on this and refuses to fix the problems.
Again, the furniture is beautiful, but not worth the hassle. We bought our new dining room table from Restoration Hardware and saved more than $1800 - the 108" reclaimed trestle table is beautiful, arrived in 2 weeks and didn't come with any of the attitude and problems as our other dining room table!
20 Comments