Chicago Kitchen Remodeling – Marlene M.
“We are extremely pleased with our kitchen remodel. We chose Normandy because they have a reputation for quality and a five-year guarantee—so they are motivated to do things right. Our designer, Stephanie Bryant, did an amazing job guiding us through the process, listening to our ideas and improving on them, bringing her deep knowledge and experience to the project. In choosing products, she was really helpful in offerings pros and cons for our choices. She went above and beyond, in terms of taking the time to make sure we were really happy with the design at every step. Our work was extensive, removing a structural wall, adding steel beams, moving plumbing, etc. Bruce Pettingill, our construction superintendent, was fantastic. He seems to know everything about construction, and is a great problem-solver, always explaining our options, being attentive to our concerns and extremely responsive. For example: one morning we awoke to find a fallen ceiling in a room adjacent to our kitchen (not part of the project but that shared a plumbing wall). We called Bruce at 7 a.m. and he was at our house within the hour, and the plumber came shortly after. It turned to be unrelated to the kitchen remodel, but Bruce diagnosed the problem (upstairs bath issue) and explained our options for repairing it, etc. Normandy repaired the drywall and cleaned up the mess at a very fair price. Overall, we felt that the change orders we did (a handful of necessary changes) were reasonably priced. The workers Normandy uses are polite, friendly, respectful and extremely careful with construction mess, etc. In fact, Bruce actually apologized to me when a tradesman was cranky and complaining about some minor issue. I’ve never run into a situation like that with a remodeling project! Remodeling is stressful and messy by its nature (and we lived in the house while the work was being done) but this was about as smooth a process as one could wish for. And their clean-up crew did an amazing job as well. Another example: we had to have a concrete post hole drilled into our finished basement. They covered everything, pulled back the carpet, built a plastic tent and drilled a hole, which was truly a concrete dust nightmare. But somehow, when construction was complete, they cleaned and put everything back in place. Bruce even found us a guy who could refit the carpet around our new post (and was less expensive than our carpet store). We waited six months after project completion to write this review, just to make sure that the follow-up on issues is as advertised. We’ve had a few very minor, non-time-sensitive issues (a sticking screen door, a cracked outlet cover, etc.) which Bruce has taken care of, and we are confident that if anything pressing came up, he or someone from the company would be here within a reasonable amount of time. Re: cost, Normandy is not the cheapest contractor out there, but in this case, you really get what you pay for. Things are done right the first time. The quality workmanship, quality products, attention to detail, Stephanie and Bruce’s commitment to making us happy and the five-year guarantee made it worth it for us.”
