Elite Kitchen and Bath

Elite kitchen and Bath/Express Contracting are two business arms of the same company. Elite sells you the materials, and you pay Express ( by the man hour) for labor. You wind up paying checks out to both companies, and in all actuality, I also wound up paying over $11,000 to the father of the owner, David, who may or may not still be part of the business, but my check sure as heck was not written out to a business. Express is apparently not licensed as I write ( it was) and Elite has never been licensed.

The Dept of Consumer Affairs told me that any retail business which refers, recommends, uses- any entity which does home improvement work must also be licensed, so Elite is in violation of licensing law. I was also supposed to be given a contract with all the details and the cost of the job, both labor and materials, but no, I never got one. All contractors know what a job is going to cost, but this one just shows up every week or two, like a rent collector, to get a check for the “work” which was done over the past two week period. After a while you do not even know how many hours the guys worked, on which jobs, and how much you are even paying.

They are also not listed with the Better Business Bureau, and according the the BBB site, they never gave them the information requested in order to list them. I hired Elite to put down a tile floor in my basement, and new ceiling tiles as well. I also hired them to do part of my kitchen, mainly replacing the island with a new one, the countertops on both the L-shape part and the new island, and to purchase and install a new wall oven, microwave, dishwasher, and eventually a sink and cooktop on the new counter. They also did some other minor jobs for me which I will mention later.

The guy who did the basement floor spent over three weeks, ten hours a day, putting down that floor. It is a very small basement, and should have taken a third of the time. At $70 an hour labor to Express Contracting, that puts an awful lot of money in their pockets. They claim they purchased over nine hundred very large floor riles - roughly 9” X 34”, but I have no information on manufacturer, color, where they came from, and there is not even one small piece left over, and I have no warranty on the floor.

They also purchased and installed a storm door for me, installed it incorrectly, and it is going to have to be removed. They took my entrance door off to install new weatherstrip on the bottom, and now it is difficult to open and close the door - it drags. The guy insists that’s the way it should be.

He brought in a painter he sub-contracts to for painting a kitchen with very little wall and trim, laundry room, powder room and basement, to the tune of over $11,000. The guy did not repair or sand anything, but merely painted over all the damaged areas.

The guy also got paint on the floors, windows, doorknobs, and ore. I am still scraping it. There were thousands of dollars of items listed as having been purchased from places like Home depot, a lumber yard, a plumbing supply place. Nothing was itemized, no . The straw that broke the camel’s back was the day the men finally arrived with the countertops, right after breaking up and removing what was here, along with my sink, cooktop, turning off the gas supply to the cooktop and all my plumbing in the kitchen. They showed up with the wrong color and pattern, and then the owner insisted it’s what I ordered. It was not.

I had to hire someone else for the counters, and to install the appliances and sink, so I am without a kitchen for weeks now, and living mostly elsewhere, coming back to the house when necessary. He owes me money as well for the counters, the sink drain an