DreamMaker Bath & Kitchen

This is a building firm to AVOID. We made a large down payment on a small bathroom remodel in February 2017 and FINALLY had our 5' x 6.5' bathroom demolished the following October. After *very* little work was done beyond removing our only bathroom, and much of that rework of things that did not pass city inspection, we had to take out a loan to pay another firm to complete the bathroom the following March. We (two senior citizens) used a port-a-pot at the top of the driveway for 144 days - all winter in Oregon, through ice and snow. When we hired competent professionals, the remodel took one week - and would have been done more quickly except that Dreammakers short-ordered the tile we did have to work with........ DO NOT HIRE these incompetent jerks. Poor communications, repeated mistakes, shoddy workmanship. We have begun legal proceedings to recover the funds we provided DMBK/ Bender Industries and have filed a complaint with the State Construction Contractor Board.

Where do I begin? In lieu of writing a novel that details every moment of the entire experience my husband and I had with DreamMaker, I’ll instead provide an overview score and the associated key components that led to us deciding to never work with them again. Overall Rating: 1/5 The “1” is merely because their primary worker, Paco, was hard-working and appeared to be the only one that would follow-through when asked questions or when he provided follow-up dates. Kerry, their “Contract Manager”/”Project Manager” was horrible to work with. He rarely returned calls, emails, or text messages—usually only doing so after my husband and I had called the office directly after being unsuccessful in getting him to respond to us. He would promise to follow-up with us and give dates (occasionally), but never actually do so, never providing an explanation nor an apology for leaving us hanging. His “craftsmanship”, if you can call it that since he painted our ceiling and walls where the work was done, was poor, at best, and my husband and I still had to go back over his mistakes and repaint after his second round of touch-ups. Greg, our designer, was a nice guy but appeared over his head and poorly trained on the system and business processes that DreamMaker uses, which was evident in change orders that related to our pantry design, heat register in the kitchen, and the placement of the lighting fixtures in the kitchen ceiling (none of them line up and there was no accommodation made to address this issue following the change in design—by DreamMaker—regarding the kitchen pantry’s size). Overall, however, Greg tried his hardest and did make every attempt (after initially dropping the ball early on in the process) to make things right so my husband and I hold no ill-will toward him. Josef, the owner, seemed more inclined to defend the lack of professionalism and poor customer service skills by Kerry than to actually address paying customer needs and concerns. He also was quick to place all blame on his former sales rep, Brandon, instead of honoring the items Brandon promised us during contract signing. He also refused to put the finish date in writing, even though it was promised to us when we initially signed the contract with DreamMaker, as well as promised to us by Kerry to which he never followed-up on (surprise). His promise to have his tile guy come back and fix issues with grout on our tiles was completely dropped and almost two months after the fact, we still haven’t heard anything. To sum up the situation in a concise way, here’s the most recent examples of our numerous negative reactions with DreamMaker: • We received a call at 6:47pm on Wednesday night from Kerry approximately 4 weeks after the job was completed with no voicemail left. His text message stated that they needed to have their electrician come back out to certify the permits/inspect since their original one dropped the ball and left the project unannounced early on. Kerry simply asked “will someone be there tomorrow to let them in”. He didn’t ask if it was convenient and didn’t explain any further where this was coming from, especially since we had, during the last walk-through with him and Josef, confirmed that all permits were completed (they emailed us copies of them after we requested them which was part of their original contract anyway, though it felt like it was a special request from us for some reason). My husband responded back about an hour later after seeing the missed call and text asking for more information and we never heard any more about. No follow-up call, nothing. That was mid-March---it is mid-April now and still no word on this from anyone at DreamMaker. • On Friday March 30, my husband spoke with Greg regarding needing copies of invoices for some of the work done for our taxes and inquired about a newly formed crack over our new bathroom wall. Greg informed him he’d forward the inquiry to Josef and Kerry--- no word back and it’s been over a week. • The project went 2 weeks over its scheduled end-date and during that time we could not get a concise revised end date from anyone. They had to come back and fix very obvious issues that would have been seen had they done a proper walk-through with Paco, however they left it to an already angry/disgruntled customer (i.e., my husband and I) to call and text and try to get some answers as to why damaged items were noted as “completed”, why drywall was done poorly, why painting overlap and poor craftsmanship was left as-is, why lights were installed in the wrong place, why cabinets were not finished to acceptable quality, why trash from the remodel was left on our back deck, etc. Long story short, I wouldn’t recommend this company to anyone. Paco was great and Greg worked his butt off, but having to deal with Kerry was a daily migraine and Josef didn’t seem to care too much that his company was represented by poorly equipped “professionals”. The overall price of the project was nearly $30k more than originally estimated, and even with the upgrade to tile and a couple change orders that were added from painting and extras not originally included as part of the signed contract from July 2017, the numbers never really seemed to add up. For those who are wondering, this is what you can expect rather than believing the likely lie they’ll tell you to get you to sign the contract: (1) We had a kitchen remodel using the same footprint, half of the guest bathroom remodeled (i.e., everything but the shower/tub area, a full master bathroom remodel using the same footprint but with a new door added, and new windows/sliding door/French door added. They only worked on our project periodically, max of 2 full days a week (or the equivalent spread over 3 or maybe 4 days). They were never at our home 5 full days and never a full 40 hours in a given week as was told it would be by the initial sales rep, Brandon. We purchased all materials independent of DreamMaker save for the kitchen tile, countertops and cabinets, and master shower door—DreamMaker bought these from their own vendors. (2) The total timeline from quote to contract signing to project completion was from July 2017 to February 2018. This is an above-average timeline based on comparable projects from friends, family, co-workers, etc. in both the PacNW and elsewhere nationally where home remodeling is a heavily-saturated market. Josef’s remark was that he couldn’t hire anyone and basically appeared grossly understaffed. Clear communication about this early on would have avoided a lot of headaches and dead air that seemed to overshadow this entire project, to be quite honest. Transparency with customers is key to successful relationships. (3) As noted above, the total cost jumped nearly $30k by the end of the project, but my husband and I can only account for about $10 in cost increases that we requested. We can only assume the other is for inflated labor costs, which we never received a breakdown of all costs as we requested several times in writing and in person. (4) Don’t expect expeditious phone calls and/or transparency as they blatantly refuse to provide that, as evident when we asked for a schedule end date numerous times, were promised it by Kerry with no delivery, and even initially were refused it by the owner, Josef, only to be shown a screen in their schedule that had it as January 21, 2018 while at an in-person meeting in Dec. 2017. (5) Though we signed the contract on July 31, 2017, the project did not officially start until mid-November 2017—that’s nearly 4 months. In that time we met and finalized our design within the first 3 weeks of signing the contract and were left in a holding pattern with no follow-up thereafter. We had basically all of the materials ordered and at the house waiting, and had begun the demolition to help expedite the project, but we were left in the dark up until about a week prior to them starting. Unacceptable. I hope this review helps others make sound decisions in their remodeling efforts. If you do decide to go with DreamMaker, I do hope your experience is better than hours. Best of luck and I do hope to never have to interact with this company ever again.

Very quick response from Brandon. He set an appointment for the following day with my husband and had an estimate to us the next day. It's been two weeks and we still haven't received our estimates from the other contractors. I will be calling Brandon tomorrow to set up a meeting with the designer. Excited to work with them.

I scheduled two different appointments with them to get a bid on my kitchen, and they didn't show for either. After the first time, I called and they apologized and rescheduled. Then they skipped the second one also, with no call and no explanation. All the people I talked with in the phone seemed very nice and genuine, so hopefully missing appointments is out of character for them.