Complaint Review: KBR Kitchen and Bath Remodeling - Fairfax Virginia

Never responded to my request for service estimate.

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Bathroom Remodel Project Discussion

After seeing many positive reviews for KBR on Angie’s List I decided to visit their Fairfax location to discuss my two bathroom remodel projects and schedule an in-home estimate. During my visit I made it very clear upfront that I would require detailed information in any proposal submitted to me for it to even be considered; I wanted it understood that receiving only a bottom line number pulled out of thin air wasn’t going to cut it for me. The employee I spoke with immediately explained that they would not do this but that he would pass my request along to management. I again explained that I didn’t want either of our time wasted and not to bother calling me to schedule the appointment if that was the case. Of course, a lady from KBR then called me to tell me again that they would not provide a detailed estimate and would not itemize labor and materials in their estimate. She told me that “no contractors in the area do this”, which is false. She also told me that this is proprietary information, which really just means that KBR doesn’t want to be transparent with its customers so we don’t figure out how excessive their margins are. I could tell the lady didn’t want to do business with someone who would actually be diligent enough to ask for real itemized numbers shown in the estimate, they know they can make plenty of money off the large pool of overpaid NoVa residents who have more money than they know what to do with and who don’t ask questions.

I did not schedule an in-home appointment with this firm and eliminated KBR from all current and future jobs to consider. I am surprised that anyone would sign a contract with a company that doesn’t provide detailed pricing information in a proposal, then again most of America is in debt and financially illiterate, so maybe it is not that surprising. I cannot speak to the quality of KBR’s work, but I can say their business practices are antiquated and lack transparency. I saw another review on Angie’s List that said they were told by KBR that itemizing would cost more, which is absurd. KBR already has those numbers or else how do they even come with an overall estimate, they are just choosing not to let you see those numbers. I personally would never do business with KBR.

• We had a full kitchen remodel (cabinets, flooring, plumbing, ceiling lighting, under-cabinet lighting, etc.) by KBR Kitchen & Bath (www.kbrva.com) in the Fall of 2012.

COMMENTARY 

We had a full kitchen remodel (cabinets, flooring, plumbing, ceiling lighting, under-cabinet lighting, etc.) by KBR Kitchen & Bath (www.kbrva.com) in the Fall of 2012.  On the bright side, the electrician did perform good work installing the new kitchen lighting.  Our ceiling lighting and under-cabinet lighting is beautifully installed.  However, we cannot recommend this company for many of the following reasons:

General Issues:

• - Since one of us is home 24/7, we made it clear that the workers would be supervised and that we did not desire to have a lockbox on the front of our home at any time. We were repeatedly approached by the project manager to have a lock-box placed on the front of our home.  Our refusal to grant them “free run of our house” resulted in them becoming very surly and disagreeable from day one. We were approached three times to have a lockbox installed on our front door, and we declined three times.

• - The workers were contracted to start as early as 7:00 a.m. and finish by 4:00 p.m. and not to ever work on weekends. The workers, if they did come at all, arrived late in the morning, afternoon, or whenever they felt like showing up. One night, the workers arrived late in the afternoon and stayed until nearly 9:00 p.m. that night.  The 2 week scheduled contract remodel turned into 4 long weeks.

• - One week, no workers came on Wednesday through Friday and then showed up on Saturday morning to briefly work for about an hour.

• - Another time the workers showed up on a Saturday around 5:30 p.m. and assumed they could work until late into that evening. We re-directed the workers to their contractor Forman to return Monday morning and begin at the contracted time of 7:00 a.m. The workers did not show up until the middle of the following week.

• - Knowing one of us is home 24/7, they were scheduled to work between 7:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. They knew one of us was waiting for the workers to start, but deliberately did not show up to work and made us wait for days at a time; and, did not bother to show up to work for nine days straight.

• - The workers left our house dirty, stole soft drinks, and without asking, used our electricity to run a microwave on our house power for their elaborate and lengthy meals throughout the day.  The workers left lunch trash and wrappers from Boston Market and Starbucks in our house and garage areas that we had to clean up.

• Most of the workers were unhygienic; and, they left urine on the floors and walls of our powder room.

  Building Issues:

• - The flooring tile was, at first, laid incorrectly. The door way threshold tiling was laid off of the center-line to the thresholds of both doors into the kitchen.  The contractors did not realize this until we told them the tiles were being laid off center from the doorway thresholds.  After some arguing, however, the workers reluctantly agreed to pull the laid tiling up to be installed correctly.

• - The screws they used to attach the cabinet doors were not long enough to ensure the doors would remain properly attached.  Needless to say, soon after the remodel, the doors began coming off.  We had to reinstall the cabinet doors ourselves at our own expense and time with the correct hardware.

•  -The workers were caught trying to sneak reinstalling the electric duplex receptacles with sheetrock screws and not use the 6x32x1” sheet metal screws that were originally installed before the kitchen remodel. The workers were advised the sheetrock screws violate the U. S. National Electric Codes (N.E.C.).  The workers reluctantly replaced the sheetrock screws with newly purchased 6x32x1” sheet metal screws; and made it clear they were not happy about having to install the electric duplex receptacles properly in accordance with the U. S. National Electric Codes.

• - The cabinets came with colored pens for touch-up and for covering any current or future scratches.  One worker fought with us, saying the touch-up pens were his property and had already removed the touchup kit from our kitchen.  We finally obtained the cabinet touch-up pens, but only after that worker was directed by another worker to retrieve the touch-up pen set from KBR’s company truck.

• - The garbage disposal was installed incorrectly, leaked, and rotated clockwise and counter clockwise every time the garbage unit was power on for use.  We had to remove it at our own expense, seal the leaking water, and re-install the entire unit to completely eliminate the unit from rotating clockwise and counter clockwise during operation. The garbage unit is now powered on for use without any rotations.

• - The under the counter sink is incorrectly installed.  The under-counter stainless steel sink is only attached on 3 of the 4 corners. We will have to have the installation corrected at our own expense.

  Payment Issues:

•  -We signed what we were told was a fixed price contact.  Before the Project Manager would leave our house on the final day, he insisted we pay an additional $670.00 that he claimed were for “Virginia State taxes.”  The Project Manager had no supporting documentation for this additional charge.  So bogus!

  DrPMSalisbury

KBR completely gutted and remodeled my galley-style kitchen.

My initial review of KBR's work was excellent, but several months later, I discovered that they cut major corners when installing the plumbing for my kitchen that have resulted in a significant expense to me and flooding in my basement. My house originally had copper plumbing connecting the kitchen to the basement, but rather then add new copper pipes, they opted to caulk the cheaper PVC pipes onto the existing copper. The resulting work ended up delivering pipes that leak, but also significantly damaged the copper pipes that now remain.  This is on top of water damage from the leaking pipes to both my basement bathroom and the side of a wood cabinet used for storage.

I've contracted with a plumbing company to correct the job that KBR did not do correctly.  Since we had an issue with our gas line when the kitchen was installed, I am not confident in going back to KBR to redo the plumbing work. The kitchen itself looks very nice -- including the cabinets, sink and countertops. But the plumbing is a mess and now I have a significant cost on top of what I paid initially for the kitchen.