T & A Carpentry & Home Restorations, Inc

This top dollar company did the outside work on my row house in Park Slope. We had the place rebuilt and sided and we put a decorative cap at the top of the building. This is the work they do slowly (5 months to being really done), at their convenience, but they do exterior work well. The problem came with the interior work.
I asked to have a built in cabinet/​bookcase built over one wall. The owner did not remember that I insisted I wanted the piece built out of solid wood, birch to be exact, and painted. Whenever you want painted wood you need to specify that it must be wood or many companies will cut corners. We wanted doors to hide the TV to fold back into the unit. When the piece came the doors could not be installed that way because the depth was wrong on the piece. The entire thing was built out of some crap pressed cardboard product which stunk of formaldehyde and fifty other chemicals — which was exactly what I wanted to avoid since we had two babies in the house. They charged $ 2500, needed up front, of course. Now, three years later that piece is bubbling from where drinks have been put down on it and since it’s cardboard it can’t be repaired. We would have had them remove it the day it arrived but after five months of construction on a job that should have taken one month we wanted to get our house back.
They also lost the handles for four of the six windows we had installed and also lost the screen to a custom window. It took weeks to convince them that they lost it and that we need the screen and then weeks to get it delivered. Never again inside the house, but for exterior work on a row house — which is tricky business — they were better than the other options. Be prepared to stay on top of them and call when they vanish for a week or two with your house covered in plywood.