We selected Andros after seeing a few other kitchen design firms because we felt we had the best rapport with Anna Rentzos. Everyone has heard the horror stories about major renovations, so we proceeded cautiously. This project involved the almost total gutting of our existing kitchen. This was not a simple cabinet and countertop replacement. There was drywall work, electrical and plumbing involved. There was structural framing work involved in turning our pantry closet into an alcove to recess our new fridge, as well as widening the entry into the adjacent dining room, which required a new longer and deeper lintel beam. Given the amount of work involved, we needed to make sure that whoever we selected could handle project management for all the work - we wanted one-stop accountability to avoid the "not my problem - his problem" syndrome if things went wrong. We felt we found this with Andros. The design process took almost 2 months due to a combination of us changing our minds and Anna coming up with new ideas that we had to digest. This is where you have to put in the time - changes are much easier and less costly at this stage than if thing come up during construction that were not anticipated. Finally we signed off on the design and our project was scheduled to start in early November. True to their word, work began on November 5. Lenny (Anna's son) and Frank handled most of the demolition and construction work and there were no issues. Demo and new structural, drywall and electrical took about a month. Porcelain tile flooring came next. Flooring may be the only slightly weak point with this company – tile work was acceptable, but there were some areas where we felt that the tiles could have been raised to compensate for some un-level areas in the sub-floor – the installer just followed the sub-floor se we ended up with gaps along the bottom of baseboards in a couple of areas, and we have to install a quarter round, which we were hoping to avoid. They did do a good job with our travertine backsplash, however.
The Canac cabinets were about a week late, through no fault of Andros. Finally the cabinets arrived (with pieces missing, including doors, hardware, etc) and Jerry did a fantastic job of installing them, including a lot of on-site custom work he had to do for fillers, crown mouldings, etc. We found that Jerry pays great attention to detail , which is very important at this stage. My advice about cabinets would be to ask the hard questions if you are planning on selecting from the Canac cabinet line (they do handle other lines) – we had some quality problems including missing pieces as mentioned above, as well as 6 doors that had to be replaced, which took over 2 months. The replacements are slightly darker than the originals and have to be replaced again. Canac did step up and replace them without complaining, including providing some dummy panels on our peninsula for free, so I have to give them credit for that, but this is a series of events we would have liked to avoid.
Our kitchen was pretty much complete by just before Christmas, so all in all, just under 2 months of construction, which we think is quite good for the scope of the work. There are a few odds and ends of finishing work left to do, which does not prevent us from using the kitchen in any way, and these small items have proven to take a long time to get completed. But we really can’t complain since they have to schedule this small stuff in among other major projects.
We are extremely happy with our kitchen and have received numerous compliments from those who have seen it. We have attached a few photos so you can judge for yourself. We would highly recommend Andros (in fact, we already have to family members). The only reason we gave them a 9 instead of a 10 is because of the tile flooring and the whole Canac problem, but really, nobody’s perfect, and we found any issues we had to deal with through the course of this project were handled professionally by Andros. We are planning a master bathroom renovation next year and will definitely return to Andros.
