Leilani in Livermore

Bruce Gellerman of Oakdale Plumbing is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and more importantly, a lousy excuse for a plumber. I do NOT recommend under ANY circumstances. Here's the scoop: When he was trying to get our job (plumbing our new custom home), he was offering to do extras for free and begged for the job, claiming he's been out of work and REALLY needs the money. So we hired him, after he kept contacting my husband to see if we had made a decision. He's in his 60's or 70's so we felt pity on him and our neighbor who referred him was using him on their new home as well. He was so pleasant and appreciative when he asked us for an advance upfront (without starting any work) and again, we thought "poor guy" because he told us he was behind on his mortgage payments. So he does the rough plumbing on our house...and now, fast forward to the time we start installing tile on the shower floors. Well, the drains are OFF-CENTER in 3 showers! I don't mean 1/2" but TWO INCHES off! Then the 4th shower, the one in the master bathroom, has 4 body sprays. Well, not only are the body sprays NOT LEVEL, but he installed the top 2 sprays to spray directly in my eyes. There's more. The rough plumbing for the 2 of our toilets were OFF-CENTER and TOO FAR AWAY from the water line he installed. When our general contractor and us told him about these issues, all he could do was start the blame game. Blah, blah, blah. He couldn't validate any of the numerous excuses he came up with when we asked, so now he turns into Mr. Hyde. He actually gets into my husband's face and yells indecencies and he also told me to "shut up" when I started talking. Seriously. My husband and I were actually in awe at his transformation and felt embarrassed and sorry for him to have acted in such a childish fashion. The end result is that Bruce is UNWILLING TO COME BACK AND FIX HIS MISTAKES UNLESS WE PAY HIM TO DO SO. He also had the nerve to come back to our jobsite and demand that we pay him for the finish plumbing, which was work he did not even do! As the job progresses, we find more problems caused by Bruce. He never installed a water line to our fridge and also did not install one to our pot filler. Good thing we have a raised foundation and were able to install these after the fact!

DH and I joined Direct Buy in February 2007, despite the awful sales pitch and presentation that made us cringe. The salesperson we signed the contract with, David Brown, was very nice and not high pressure at all, but we did not need convincing because we both had already decided to join. We were getting ready to build a new home and it was a fairly easy decision to invest in a membership because we estimated spending somewhere in the 6-digits for our project, thus the savings would far exceed the membership cost. And it has...many times over. We're nearing completion of our home and have found that more things are much cheaper to buy through Direct Buy than not. We purchased 6 fireplace units, 4 fireplace mantels/surrounds, a central vacuum system, plumbing fixtures, 8 freestanding bath vanities, outdoor BBQ items, 8 toilets, kitchen appliances, laundry room and hobby room cabinets, 3 custom waterjet medallions, marble & onyx tiles, glass mosaic tiles, deco liner tiles, granite & marble slabs...and we haven't even ordered furniture yet! Some items that we didn't purchase through Direct Buy were: roof tile, lumber, framing hardware, windows and doors, insulation, heating and air conditioning units, drywall, paint, kitchen and great room cabinets, garage doors, lighting, shower doors and carpet. This was because either they didn't offer it, we didn't care for the vendor or we found it cheaper elsewhere. One word on the cabinets: we tried to get a bid for whole house cabinets using one of their in-house designers, Dave...it was a complete waste of time! We showed him our inspiration pics and he basically told us upfront that the person who designed those cabinets was an award-winning designer with a long list of credentials and certifications and many years of experience, and he wasn't good enough to be able to design something on that level. He said he would try to copy the look as best he could, so we left a copy of our plans with him and waited for our bid. We finally heard from him almost a month later and he said that Dickinson Cabinetry (their custom cabinet maker vendor in San Jose) told him it would be at least $50k just for the kitchen cabinets...but they didn't even have any sketches or renderings done yet! So without an actual bid, the slow turnaround time for a follow-up phone call and the self-admission of Dave that he wasn't that good, we went with the cabinet designer that actually did the cabinets in our inspiration photo (not related to Direct Buy in any way) and they did an awesome job on our kitchen and great room cabinets. Months later, we went back and decided to give them another chance at bidding our laundry room and hobby room cabinets. We worked with a different Dave this time (Dave Santana) and although he was much better to work with than the previous Dave, his follow-up appointments were weeks down the road...and we didn't want another long wait. So we ended up going to Direct Buy East Bay in Pleasanton and used a wonderful cabinet designer, Jerry Manning, to order our laundry room and hobby room cabinets (which came out great, by the way). There are several customer service employees who are outstanding: Amy Sroufe the manager, Abby and the two men (Randy and the young gentleman with the beard who has been there since day 1...sorry your name escapes me right now but you are SO helpful!) There are also a couple of girls who continuously make mistakes on my orders or forget to even process them, and that's extremely frustrating... I completely understand how the initial sales presentation can turn a lot of people away...but if you are really going to spend over $100k in home improvement or are building a new home, if the location of Direct Buy is convenient to you, if you don't mind ordering through catalogs and arranging for pick-up yourself (you can also arrange for delivery to any other Direct Buy, which we did to the Pleasanton location), then you can save some serious money by joining. 5 stars just for the fact that I saved so much money through Direct Buy. Minus 1/2 star for the awful presentation. Minus 1/2 star for Dave (not Dave Santana) the cabinet designer and the two customer service girls that mess up my orders.

Bedrosian's in Rancho has a beautiful showroom and they have a greeter at the door. Things kind of went downhill from here, though. I told them I was looking at marble and granite for new residential construction and the hostess (??) directed me to the order desk to pick up a notepad and pencil to write down my selections. She said I could have up to 3 samples to take home. WTF??? I'm building a house with 8 bathrooms and I'm only "allowed" 3 friggin' samples??? Whatever. I drove here all the way from So. Placer so I might as well look around. So I picked my 3 samples and went to the order desk so they could fetch the samples and I could be on my way. The lady who was helping me said, "That'll be $20, please." WTF, again??? First, they wanna LIMIT me to 3 samples...then they wanna charge MORE than the total retail cost of the samples? I told her I've been to Arizona Tile, who doesn't limit OR charge for samples, and she told me I would get my $20 back if I brought back the samples within 10 days. I said that won't work because I don't live nearby and I wasn't planning on coming back, so I guess she sympathized with me because then she told me to just go ahead and take the samples and she'll waive the $20 fee. Thank you...I guess...and I did end up ordering almost $3,000 of Emperador Dark and Golden Onyx mosaic mesh tiles from them, as they had the best price for those particular stones.

The staff at Arizona Tile in Roseville is the BEST! Everyone is so helpful, cheerful, friendly and seem to really enjoy working there...what a nice change from other stone yards and tile showrooms in the Sacramento area! Anika Ulrich helped DH and I create 3 custom waterjet marble medallions for our new home and the process from selecting marbles to ordering to receiving the medallions at the Livermore location was seamless. She was also a great help in finalizing selections in several bathrooms and never hesitated to give me different sample tiles to take home and try out.

Art Culinaire is the sole vendor in the USA for Lacanche (a company in France that makes ranges). They've been a joy to deal with in purchasing my Lacanche Cluny 1400 Classique in Burgundy Red...a gorgeous piece of art that will be the centerpiece of my kitchen! Although the Lacanche range is quite pricey compared to the American counterparts, it is a completely different piece of equipment. For instance, the Lacanche is handmade in France and it's built with the configuration you choose (burner options, oven options, warming cabinet, color, trim). Haven't installed it yet, but I'll post an update as soon as it is and I've cooked on it a few weeks!

We saw the beautiful work of Savage Designer Cabinets at the Street of Dreams (Serrano, El Dorado Hills and Dark Horse, Auburn) and Dream Home Showcase (Catta Verdera, Lincoln). Let me just say that DH and I have seen a lot of homes and these cabinets were the best we've ever seen! We're currently finishing up the build of our new home and our Savage cabinets have exceeded our expectations. They did our main kitchen, serving kitchen and great room entertainment center and the cabinets are quite stunning, if I may say so myself. :) The installers they use are top-notch. They're a couple of very experienced men who work conscientiously, efficient and without error...no messin' around like a lot of subs on the job. They're expensive but worth it and I wouldn't hesitate to use them again. Steve Savage is a rare gift to homeowners. He possesses a natural talent for kitchen design and I think of him as an artist with a vision and wood is his paintbrush. He has an outstanding professional staff who can execute his designs from paper to installation. Out of all the contractors we've worked with on this build, Savage Designer Cabinets is #1!

How do you spell Western Wall Systems? P-R-O-B-L-E-M-S. We contracted them to do drywall, stucco and BayStone/Bayfoam architectural trim on our new 8,000 sq. ft. custom home in Ruby Hill Vineyard Estates. Not only did they demonstrate shoddy workmanship, poor quality control, lack of expertise in delivering what was specified, but they did not even finish the job and had the audacity to file a mechanic's lien AND a lis pendens on our house! They never finished the drywall installation, they neglected to apply a primer coat before the stucco color, they bent the bullnose metal corners throughout the house and the President of the company was a no-call no-show when we made an appointment to discuss and review the company's quality issues. Additionally, we paid a 50% deposit on the BayStone/Bayfoam architectural stone products in April 2008 and they have never delivered one piece of it...yet they are still trying to collect the balance! BEWARE OF BAYFOAM, BAYSTONE, WESTERN WALL SYSTEMS!

On 8/11/08 I gave Viking Pools of the Greater Valley a check for $200.00 (towards a $45,000.00 installation of an "Acapulco" pool at my home in Livermore). After my check cleared, Gabe refused to return my phone calls (I tried reaching him for NINE DAYS before he finally called me back) and will not come back out to the site. He also refuses to give out his cell phone number and his office assistants are no help. They have done absolutely NOTHING - no permit was applied for, no pool has been ordered and I finally filed complaints against them with the BBB and the CSLB. Unfortunately, they're not BBB members, so the BBB couldn't do much except ask them to try to resolve the complaint by refunding my $200 deposit for a job they didn't even start, but they did not. The CSLB closed the complaint I filed because they said they are not authorized to conduct investigations on a contractor who HAS NOT STARTED ANY WORK...and since Gabe of Viking Pools GV did a take-my-deposit-and-run, it is a civil matter and beyond the CSLB's jurisdiction. They investigate workmanship issues and Viking Pools GV did not perform ANY work. Now we have a small claims court date of April 29, 2009. May justice be served!