Kitchen - Granite/Cabinets

I saw some old posts on the forum about granite and countertops but nothing recent.... I was wondering if someone could provide recent recommendations for granite and cabinets... Has anyone recently used Flintstone? I saw that came highly recommended at the end of 2007...

Thanks!

 

I would HIGHLY recommend the Nadeem, the guy that Staci Kapinos recommended for carpets. He does granite and kitchen stuff too- his prices are awesome and he is reliable & knowledgable. I'll look up that thread and post it here in a sec.. Tell him Sunny says hi!...

 

okay here's what flynnibus had originally posted...we did use him and have been REALLY happy with his work- thanks for the suggestion flynn!

We opt'd to replace the carpet in our old place before moving. We found CMI Designs through a referral and the owner Nadeem has been very pleasant to deal with. He was very friendly with my family, and while he is a bit of true salesman at heart, he has proven himself to me as a very straight shooter. He listens to your needs, and offers no non-sense pricing and product to fit them. We had a great transaction installing carpet at the old place.

When we bought our new place, we needed to replace the carpet. Calling on Nadeem again, he came out to measure. When we dropped by his shop (over by the old Dick's location) unannounced to browse some of our options, he quickly prepared the numbers and went through some options. He impressed me with his recollection (on the fly) of details of the house.. including the brand of appliances we could not remember! He was dead-on and obviously detail oriented.

Realize, he is a sales man, and I work with sales so I know when to tune out, etc.. but he did impress me because obviously he is interested in not just supplying a role of carpet, but also in style and coordinating. If you are like me, and artistically neutered, its great having someone who can help pull the elements together. Nadeem was a great help in looking forward with what we wanted to do with the decorating. He was also very instrumental in helping decide what to put down material wise, as we were looking at several options.. and ended up with a blend of hardwood and carpet. Again, Nadeem offered very straight forward pricing, and lined up several options.

When we finally executed, we had one snafu between the hardwood guys and the carpet guys, but a few calls from msflynn got things back on track. The installs went smooth, and when we had 2 items we weren't 100% pleased with, they came back the very next day to correct them no questions asked.

Nadeem has been a great help in selecting what we wanted, offering us good options, providing straight forward no-BS pricing, and has stood behind their work so far. No hidden costs, etc. Give him a call if you have any flooring needs. He is also into other remodeling, including Kitchens (cabinets, counters, etc). I'd highly recommend speaking to him if you are interested in someone that really seems to take customer service seriously. http://www.cmidesignstudio.com/

 

I am also planning to change countertops with granite...Ours is a townhouse.

Any idea how much it would cost? Any suggestion on granite quality/grade?

TIA

 

We used Flintstone granite for our counters, they were very helpful with. wonderful suggestions and everything was done in 2 days including measuring and adding a new sink and faucet. Great prices also!

 

We used USA Marble and Granite based on recommendations in this forum to install granite countertops in December 2008. We also received quotes from Flintstone, CMI, and Granite Granite Granite. We were very happy with USA Marble - the removal of the old countertops and install went smoothly, and the new countertops look great! Highly recommend.

 

We used Modern Remodeling for our kitchen remodel and we are extremely pleased about the results. They pretty much handled everything. All we had to do was pick everything out and do the design. They hooked us up with MasterCraft cabinets in Manassas and Discover Granite also in Manassas. Once we made the choices Modern Remodeling handled everything else.

We did a lot more than a simple redo though. We completely redesigned the kitchen and even had some exterior door/window changes done to fix the horrible flow that VM had come up with. My wife and I did all of the design work. Modern Remodeling did all of the carpentry work and Discover Granite did the granite install but to us we only paid Modern.

Prices were extremely reasonable as well.

Modern Remodeling Contact Info:

Nathan Rowitz
Modern Remodeling, Inc.
703-361-9944 office
www.modernremodelinginc.com

We've had Nathan do several projects including our patio and soon they will be doing a new fireplace for us. We are extremely happy with the quality of their work and their prices.

Here's a before picture and a few after pictures.

 

We also used USA Marble & Granite. Highly recommend them, stay away from PlanitGranite...sky high prices.

We used Nadeem (CMI) in '04, biggest $8K mistake we made for our basement carpet & Armstrong flooring in the basement kitchen. Brought him out twice to compete on Hardwood Flooring & Granite (for both kitchens) each time his price came in >30% higher and each time he promised to come back and fix our basement carpet.

Nadeem/CMI has yet to fix the carpet issue and had multiple no shows appointments with us (as recent as Nov'07), I gave up on Nadeem/CMI and wouldn't recommend him, period.

 

hey! you have the same model as us- what are you doing with your fireplace? how much did that kitchen cost you? it looks great- and looks like there is more storage!

 

Our model is the Winterset.

There is TONS of new space in the new design. Entertaining is so much nicer now with it redone. We reclaimed that large area where the coat closet is (just made the coat closet smaller) and used that for the floor to ceiling cabinet with the convection microwave. We also took down the junk pantry and got some built in cabinet ones next to the fridge with roll outs which are awesome. We took out the desk and now have that whole area as cabinet space and we took back the island so now we have just so much counter top space that we did not have before and there is no gas stuff in the island so now we have the entire island as storage space. Absolutely wonderful.

The appliances were bought separate through Ferguson. We bought the full Viking package so that was a bit pricey. Not including the appliances the cost was under 60k. We are still finishing up so I don't have the final number yet. It will probably be a bit lower than that. We went quite a bit over on our cabinets from what was in the contract and we deviated a bit from what was in the contract so we have to settle up still. The granite was included in our contract so I do not know the exact price of that. All of the lighting, accessories, backsplash, counter tops, etc were in the contract and the cabinets were a floating item. We also had a lot of electrical work done and gas lines were moved. We also had the double doors to the exterior removed and put windows in place and had a new door put in entering into the kitchen so the cost includes that as well.

As for the fireplace, we're planning to have a floor to ceiling hearth built. Not sure of the material yet. Sounds like stone will be really $$$ and there are some awesome faux ones out there now that we may go with. We are going to have the fire place raised about 6 inches and have a little hearth build and a nice wood mantle. Also going to have them move the exterior vent to go out the roof. Right now with our deck the vent is at arm level and I've burned myself on it so I want to have that moved.