Knickerbocker Group

Jun 19th, 2023

Nov 8th, 2021

So many problems with the house they designed and built for us in Maine.  Overall, the house feels like a quality house, but there have been ongoing problems for years that they've never fixed that were under warranty including but not limited to:Major stonework mistake that could've been prevented had their subcontractor known how to work with the stone that was used. Their solution was to cover it with a faux finish which we refused.Ridiculous mistake in a bathroom that resulted in a destroyed slab of marble & an incorrectly installed tub. Truly awful lighting design that they failed to install properly. Mismatched cabinetry finishes. We had doors taken down to fix them, and they came back worse.  Ridiculously poor communication in general happened. They assigned the wrong wood to cabinetry and then offered to do a faux finish to cover it. A faux finish.Dangerous falling snow and ice hazard on the roof near a doorway where they forgot to put snow hooks. Poorly designed landscape lighting plan so we've got an enormous electrical box right in our front lawn because they didn't wire it into the basement.No radon mitigation system installed, which meant our kids were poisoned the first year we lived there.Unbearable problems with heating and cooling. For the first two years we had no heating/cooling in our guest bedroom suite. And no heat in a child's bedroom. No one wants to help with that problem. There should have been more heating zones, we later found out. There may be a problem with how a radiant floor was installed (no heat coming out). All the doorknobs in the house had to be repaired multiple times. That's *every single* doorknob in the house. Finally they were replaced, after a year and a half chasing the subcontractor. We hired Knickerbocker, that is, we paid them extra, to be our project manager, but they have forced me to handle the things like this that had to be redone. The doorknobs are starting to fall apart again. Some of the replacements were not the same level of quality as what we originally paid for. Trim has been falling off since we moved in, in the kitchen and garage.  Every few days we have to reattach it. Lights were installed incorrectly and we have to hire people to reinstall them.You won't see our house on their website. I suppose they're not proud of the work they did there.  We aren't sure what happened when they were building for us, exactly, but I suspect it was a matter of problems in the organization with communication. When I would visit the construction site, I'd raise concerns about things I saw going on, and my concerns would be dismissed. This was the first house I ever built, so I know better now. Do not hire them to design without getting a commitment that you won't be dumped from one designer to the next. And do not hire them to project manage! They will not keep your costs on track at all! When I had to have my windows washed the first time after moving in, I got estimates from a handful of places nearby. The estimates ranged from about 450$ to 900$, with one at about 1800$. The 1800$ estimate crew said they'd done the windows on the house before, when Knickerbocker hired them to do a construction clean out. I don't know what was more shocking, learning that Knickerbocker hired the literally *most expensive possible window washers*, or that they had had the windows cleaned at all. Our house seemed clean but was actually filthy when we moved in. Every cabinet had sawdust in it, and all the filters in the HVAC system were thick with drywall. But they did windows. We did not deserve to end up with an over budget house that is full of mistakes for which nobody will take responsibility. I have not seen anything stunning about my home's design that makes me feel the sky-high cost was worth it. It's a pretty house, but it's a cold house, literally. It's a house where the doorknobs rattle loudly when you open a door, and things fall apart and have to be propped up again since we are not handy.  If I could do it again it would've been with another company entirely.
Jan 25th, 2015