Renovation referrals

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irvinehomeowner

Well-known member
In our various homes we've always wanted to redo bathrooms, kitchens, flooring and paint.

For flooring and paint, it's pretty easy to get referrals and give them... I've used a few people and they have consistently given me good results and I refer them out freely. But for bathrooms and kitchens... it seems really hard to get a good... or even *give* a good referral. The really good ones are expensive or take a long time (since they are busy) and the mediocre ones you really don't want to refer to others (and possibly your friends don't want to refer them to you).

We redid our kitchen in one of our homes once and while the work turned out great... the process was a nightmare. Contractor took forever on some things and I can admit there were others where we kept changing what we wanted and that irritated the contractor. In the end, we got a nice kitchen but we don't think we would refer them to friends/family just because they took so long to finish our project.

With bathrooms, I can't seem to get a good referrals. I've gotten quotes from several Yelp ones and they were hit and miss. Some quotes varied by thousands and others were sketchy. A friend of ours had several of his bathrooms redone but by 2 different people and he really doesn't recommend either of them. The one who he recommended for his kitchen ghosted us after we got a bid. We even have a friend who is a contractor but he's not close by and always seems too busy to bid out a quote for us.

Maybe it's just me but I've never really seen anyone rave about any great contractors here on TI (except maybe some landscaping companies). Even gardeners or housekeepers referrals seem to be horded. Solar referrals seem to be in abundance though. :)

If a contractor does a decent job, I'll Yelp review them but I wouldn't recommend them to friends/family so maybe that's why it's harder to give/get referrals from people you know rather than strangers on the Internet.
 
irvinehomeowner (or anyone else for that matter) - would you mind sharing your recs for flooring people? Much appreciated
 
I’ll add my request. The Thermofoil on my kitchen cabinets (primarily doors) is peeling. Figured all they had to do was completely remove the old and add a new Thermofoil covering. Guy said they have a machine that will do it but the company refuses to do so. They only want bigger jobs i. e. Refinish the entire kitchen.

As I think more about it, can they refinish all the cabinets without requiring more work - replacing countertops, backsplash etc. My “little” project might be a kitchen remodel!

Last year I got quotes from painters to do my exterior shutters, wood trim and doors. Looked like most everyone was busy and just gave outrageous prices and figured some suckers would pay it. Kind of like WTF Irvine home prices. Just felt that they didn’t care about their quality and scheduling either. No guarantee for either.
 
I’ll add my request. The Thermofoil on my kitchen cabinets (primarily doors) is peeling. Figured all they had to do was completely remove the old and add a new Thermofoil covering. Guy said they have a machine that will do it but the company refuses to do so. They only want bigger jobs i. e. Refinish the entire kitchen.

As I think more about it, can they refinish all the cabinets without requiring more work - replacing countertops, backsplash etc. My “little” project might be a kitchen remodel!

Last year I got quotes from painters to do my exterior shutters, wood trim and doors. Looked like most everyone was busy and just gave outrageous prices and figured some suckers would pay it. Kind of like WTF Irvine home prices. Just felt that they didn’t care about their quality and scheduling either. No guarantee for either.
You may want to call this guy - his name is Wilfredo and his number is (714) 553-1841. He is a carpenter and has his own business. I used him back in April or so of 2020. I have not contacted him since then so not sure if that is still his number.

We have a pretty massive island and there was a ton of cabinets underneath the island but it was hard to use the entire cabinet because it was hard to reach the back 2/3s of each cabinet shelf. He added some heavy duty sliding drawers (replaced each shelf) and it greatly expanded our usable storage.

Now we can pull out the entire drawer, get what we need and just push it back in. It’s been about 4 years now and have had absolutely no issues with any of the drawers.
 
Dear TI folks,
I need referrals to contractors for adding door and closet to a room, and replacing carpet with LVP. Thanks in advance!
 
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