Review: Harrell Remodeling

I STRONGLY advise folks to stay away from Harrell Remodeling unless you want to rapidly be parted from you money

We live in a modest 1,800 square foot house build in 1995. Wanting to upgrade our master bathroom as well as other parts of the house, we contacted Harrell remodeling.

Over the course of a four to six weeks, we were charged approximately $7000 by Harrell for some very basic CAD and design work in order to work towards a preliminary estimate. The estimate we received for our project came to almost $400,000 (The house itself cost about 315,000 to build back in 1995). Keep in mind that we were NOT doing any major structural work i.e. no load bearing walls were being moved, no bedroom or bathrooms being added etc.

Specifically,the work on our master bathroom alone was projected at between $120,000 to $140,000 dollars. Please keep in mind that all we were fundamentally doing was replacing a tub with a shower, updating fixtures, flooring, and removing a sheetrock dividing wall. There was no major plumbing, structural, and/or electrical work involved.

I have struggled repeatedly to come up with how a bathroom remodel, for what is by most standards a small master bathroom, could cost over $120,000 (or over 1,400/sq ft). I just could not find a way to rationalize it even when I priced in some of the more expensive bathroom products.

In addition, the design output we received for our $7000 included a couple of basic drawings and renderings and some printouts and photocopies of fixtures. How that could possibly come to $7000 is mind blowing

We have been clients of Harrell Remodeling (HRI) for 16 years and have used them for a whole house remodel and numerous smaller projects. We have used other contractors for a few projects and regretted not using HRI each time we made that choice. HRI provides a level of professionalism, service, quality, accountability and warranty that is rare in their industry. They are full service in every respect. In addition, they run a highly ethical and worker-friendly company. This translates into their workers being highly skilled, reliable, courteous and meticulous. You can certainly find less expensive contractors than HRI, but you also get what you pay for if you hire them. The value HRI adds is exceptional craftsmanship and creativity and the peace of mind of having your project managed by people who love their work and care about their clients from start to finish and for as long as you own your home. Undoubtedly, they are among the most expensive companies in their field, so if that's your biggest concern, they aren't going to be competitive with others.

L Walker, I completely understand them charging more for being a full service build/design firm, and expected to pay more for those very reasons; however, consider the example of our master bathroom and the scope of work and I think you would agree that $120k-140k is simply beyond outrageous. No matter how you slice it, there is simply no way it should cost anywhere near that much

To give you a comparison, I have received quotes for the same work from anywhere from 20K-30K from reputable companies (one of which recently remodeled a friends bathroom)

I am seriously considering writing a letter to Iris Harrell since I have to believe that there is something terribly wrong with the quote we received from her company.

Perhaps the designer we worked with simply didn't know what he was doing. I can tell you for certain that $7000 we paid for the dismal design output we received unfortunately did not speak of a highly ethical, skilled, nor quality oriented company

Over the past couple of weeks the General Manager of Harrell Remodeling contacted me regarding my review of the company. During our call, he promised to look into what had happened and to get back to me with additional details. This culminated in a conference call this morning between him, Iris Harrell (the company's principle) and myself. I felt that the call was very productive and that the folks from Harrell were genuinely listening to my concerns. What I most wanted out of all of this was for my experience to not to be repeated, and I felt that they understood and respected this.

When I returned home from work today, there was a hand delivered letter from Iris Harrell detailing the procedures that she has immediately put into place to prevent this from happening again. Specifically this includes supervisors following up with clients immediately after budgets are presented, as well as being more mindful of the desired client investment during the design phase.

In addition, the company is providing me with all of the design work (e.g. cad drawings etc) that they had been working on as was part of my design.

I want to congratulate Harrell for being proactive and honestly caring about the customer, as well as being expeditious in action by making immediate changes.

Harrell Remodeling did come highly recommended to us, but no one is perfect and mistakes do occur. What is important is that when they are made that they are admitted to and corrected.

Harrell has done just that in a proactive and expeditious manner. I can honestly say that not only does the company care about its reputation, but it also genuinely cares about its customers.

Ross D wrote:

Over the past couple of weeks the General Manager of Harrell Remodeling contacted me regarding my review of the company. During our call, he promised to look into what had happened and to get back to me with additional details. This culminated in a conference call this morning between him, Iris Harrell (the company's principle) and myself. I felt that the call was very productive and that the folks from Harrell were genuinely listening to my concerns. What I most wanted out of all of this was for my experience to not to be repeated, and I felt that they understood and respected this.
When I returned home from work today, there was a hand delivered letter from Iris Harrell detailing the procedures that she has immediately put into place to prevent this from happening again. Specifically this includes supervisors following up with clients immediately after budgets are presented, as well as being more mindful of the desired client investment during the design phase.
In addition, the company is providing me with all of the design work (e.g. cad drawings etc) that they had been working on as was part of my design.
I want to congratulate Harrell for being proactive and honestly caring about the customer, as well as being expeditious in action by making immediate changes.
Harrell Remodeling did come highly recommended to us, but no one is perfect and mistakes do occur. What is important is that when they are made that they are admitted to and corrected.
Harrell has done just that in a proactive and expeditious manner. I can honestly say that not only does the company care about its reputation, but it also genuinely cares about its customers.

What kind of mistakes they made and how they corrected? I am thinking use HRI as well but I am bit hesitating after seeing this.

Thanks a lots

Try these guys they are good

http://www.abcinca.com/

they did my room additon, I loved there work

phony phony

We want to thank everyone at Harrell for us for the wonderful job they did on our new remodeled bedroom. We love it! All of our friends loved it too--they were so impressed with everything, and it was a lot of fun to show it off to everyone.

Thank you to all the guys who helped bring our dream to a reality by their workmanship: Jason, Malcom, Jose, Paco, Marco, Jesse, and Marshall are the ones that stand out in my mind--I'm so sorry if I'm forgetting anyone. I'm so glad Ozzie didn't bite any of you. You were all so polite to me and seemed to be happy to be here. It made having you around here every day for six months very comfortable.

Thank you to everyone at Harrell who answered our questions and offered us water every time we came into the office. You really spoiled us. Apparently, this is not how clients are usually treated by remodeling companies.

Thank you to Bella for knowing how to put on a party and how to manage a photo shoot--and for how to locate Patsy and Dave when I couldn't find them.

Thank you to Iris for hiring all these good people and for the purple throw.

Thank you to Dave for always being serious when you had to be and being goofy the rest of the time. Thanks for running such a tight ship. Thanks for getting that moment frame to fit on the bolts. Thanks for making us such beautiful ceilings. Thanks for choosing the best subcontractors. Thanks for moving our furniture back and forth. Thanks for all those stories. Sorry you had all those sleepless nights--see, you had nothing to worry about.

Thank you to Patsy for managing to understand what we wanted. Apparently, you understood what we wanted better than we did because we could never have thought of this by ourselves. Thanks for correcting my color choices and talking us into a "stucco" shower room. Thanks for all the windows--whoopee, triple panes! Thanks for Ed's shower tower and the big shower head instead of the little one that he thought he wanted. Thanks for fitting in a big jewelry box for me and finding a place to put the ironing board in the closet. And most of all, thanks for all the rocks! I'm the only person I know who has designer rocks.

I'm sure I could go on and on, but I just wanted to express our happiness with our new, luxurious master suite. I hope we can do this again very soon. Well, at least as soon as Ed's stock recovers.
Thanks again!!