Custom Spaces Kitchens & Baths

I used Custom Spaces to help design my newly renovated kitchen and den. Their showroom has tons of beautiful materials, finishes and good quality cabinets, most of which I chose to use. They were very fast in developing a schematic plan, and their detailed drawings were rapidly approved by the City of Berkeley. The project turned out great! I also used one of their recommended contractors, Wilson Remodeling and he was great. If you need hand holding during the construction process you would need to request additional project management hours beyond the basic budget. To view the results, you can look at photos on the following link.
Laura B.

«e couldn’t be happier with our experience with Catherine and Custom
Spaces. We are planning to use her again soon for our bathrooms.
From the start Catherine really spent a lot of time understanding how we
would use the kitchen and adjoining space. We combined a small u-​shaped
kitchen and a dining room to create a huge space with an Island big enough
for 4 people. We also opened up a staircase and broke through the wall that
had isolated the living room. My original idea was very different and
Catherine was able to come up with something much, much better. Catherine
uses Sketch Up 3D modeling software so you get to see what your project will
look like before you commit to anything. This gave us the confidence we
needed to make such big changes.
Catherine is very professional and responsive. Her showroom is packed full
of all kinds of materials and the vendors she uses were also wonderful.

Custom Spaces just completed a total remodel of our kitchen, which included removing a wall and expanding the kitchen into the former laundry room. It came out so beautiful, I’m stunned. I highly recommend Custom Spaces. The workmanship is first rate. The people are so nice. The sub-​contractors were completely trustworthy. We used the 3D Google Sketch to see our kitchen design and it was very helpful. At first I wasn’t sure the two different cabinet materials would work, but being able to see it 3D allowed me to see that it would be interesting and beautiful. We are delighted with the results. We have other projects to be done on our house, and we will definitely use them again.
Judith M

Repeat review as my other one somehow ended up in the filtered section:
We recently remodeled our kitchen and used Catherine and Dan from Custom Spaces. We had some ideas going into our first meeting on how we wanted our kitchen. Our initial consultation went well and Catherine was prompt to send us the quote she worked out. Unfortunately it was more than we really wanted to spend.
We then went to check out other vendors in the East Bay Area. We could get the materials cheaper but they weren’t exactly what we wanted. We interviewed 1 contractor who came via references of an associate of ours. He was thorough and we liked all of his ideas, the only problem was all of the money we saved on the hardware we would have to pay to him for the labor.
We went back to Custom Spaces made some small modifications to our design and signed up to have them do the job. We were working on a tight schedule as we are expecting our first child and the time table we had was not the most forgiving. All of the hardware came in and Dan and his team did great and professional work. I had to do some coordinating for appliance removal/​delivery as well as granite installation. We ran into 1 issue where the ceiling light was too large and some of the new wall cabinets wouldn’t open all the way. Dan told us he would remove it and install a new one to rectify the situation. A quick trip to Berkeley Lighting to pick up a new fixture solved the issue. In the end the project was done on time and the baby was late two weeks, go figure lol.
Our kitchen is complete we love the custom cabinets, the granite, and the new appliances (Airport Appliance in Oakland). We recommend Custom Spaces to anyone that is looking for a quality product and great workmanship. We have 2 bathrooms we will be remodeling and they will be our first choice.
Update 18 months after the project:
My Wife and I still love, love, love our kitchen. It has made cooking fun again for us. We have a lot more storage space and it looks great. We are about to redo our bathrooms and we will be using Custom Spaces for the work.

I went in for my free consultation and the showroom was really stunning. I am still researching options for my bathroom remodel but they seem really willing to work with our budget and offered some creative solutions. I had two small children with me and they were so patient and even had a little kids area for them to play.

I used Custom Spaces for a master bathroom remodel in my home built in 1920, with the original bathroom still intact. The job was a complete demolition and rebuild — taking over some space from an adjacent closet.
I’m very happy with the work Daniel and Catherine did on the project and I would use Custom Spaces again. The quality of the finished product is exceptional and I found them both easy to work with and receptive to changes, questions and anything I needed.
Like most construction, mine cost a bit more than I thought it would and it took a bit longer than I thought it would. There were no major problems
with the project itself, there were a couple minor communication problems, but given the nature of the work, nothing I found out of the ordinary and all was managed to a great completion.
I’m a satisfied customer and will consult with Catherine and Daniel on my next project. I like that they’re a local business too!

End result is quite good. Mostly satisfied, and might or might not use them again. There were some frustrating moments.
Read on, take a look at the strengths and weaknesses so you can decide for yourself.
–The Good–
The contractor overseeing the project is intelligent, precise, and skilled. He does things the right way and doesn’t cut corners. He is careful and easy to work with.
The showroom is packed with an great selection of samples. Their supplies far exceed the boring stuff from home expo. You’ll find lots of choices you didn’t know existed.
–The Bad–
Terrible communication. If there’s a delay or a problem, they should infom the customer. Periodic status updates would keep you in the loop and relaxed that they’re on top of it. But that’s not what happens. You’re completely in the dark throughout the whole project. If a cabinet is late, or a faucet is delayed, you’ll never know. You have to repeatedly nag them, and becomes a hassle.
The scheduling is less than optimal. Work will suddenly come to a grinding halt for days and sometimes an entire week. You’ll have a half-​built bathroom just sitting there. This goes back to the communication. If you don’t call, nothing will happen.
The spotty coordination between subcontractors causes problems. The hand-​off is not at all smooth from demolition — plumbing — tile — sheetrock — paint — cabinets. Consequently, your project drags on forever. You know communication is problematic when you find yourself answering a question 5 times because they don’t talk to each other.
Ball dropping. There are times when no one seems to know what’s going on. The office is waiting on the contractor who is waiting to hear from the office. It’s like no one is in charge. They juggle multiple projects at once and you really feel juggled. You have to call again and again or nothing happens. I don’t like doing that. It makes me feel like I’m the bad guy.
Damage. The contractor is very careful. But the subcontractors, especially when unsupervised, are not. Our adjacent room had dings in the walls, a framed picture was broken, our garage door was dented, they cracked a new sink, the tile guys left broken glass on the front steps after cutting. They forgot to turn on the alarm when leaving several times, and once they actually left with the door unlocked.
–Mixed–
The design process is not what I expected. They don’t really have a designer who comes to your place to discuss the room and put together a selection of different designs. You have to have your own ideas to which they can offer helpful suggestions. Their design process amounts to flipping through catalogs and samples and building the room piece by piece. I prefer a more holistic approach.

We have wanted to remodel our kitchen for years now. We had no idea where to start or what to do. Custom Spaces remodeled our friend’s kitchen and we really liked what they did. When we went in to meet Catherine, she was very helpful. Her extensive knowledge and excellent design sense reassured us and gave us the confidence we needed to make all the right decisions (with her help!). She was very patient as we looked things over again and again before finalizing. We made numerous trips to the showroom asking for advice and always found the answers we needed and samples to take home and see how they might look in our house.
All of the recommendations Custom Spaces made were very professional, knowledgeable, and the lowest price! We shopped for a better deal, but found out that we didn’t need to. Their showroom is one-​stop shopping and we loved being able to go there and find beautiful, affordable cabinets and other materials to put in our home. They have everything we wanted and what we saw in books, they ordered for us if they didn’t have it.
Next was the construction! They decided to take on our project themselves. Their general contractor Daniel and his brother Jason were great! They were trustworthy and very reliable. They also tried to be as accommodating as possible — minimizing in every way the amount of inconvenience during our remodel. Daniel left my kitchen sink intact until he absolutely had to remove it. At the end of each day he’d move my plug in stove back into place so I could still cook!
We are SO happy with our newly remodeled kitchen!
We could not have done it without Catherine & Dan and Custom Spaces!
We would refer them to our friends and most certainly use them again.

I was totally taken in by the beautiful looking kitchens on their website. I was also totally taken in by the sales pitch I got at our *free* consultation. So we signed a check to have Catherine at Custom Spaces help us with our kitchen design decisions. In retrospect I see that my heightened state of anxiety over all the decisions that had to be made may have really suppressed my normally very acute intuition. Since every email I got from the company had a smiley face on it, I am really quite disappointed in myself — I should have known that this was not a place I was destined to work well with. To her credit, Catherine did put together some very nice cabinet design changes for our kitchen. However, she did so without regard to the budget we told her we had when we went in. Instead of telling us along the way that the changes we were making were going to take us way outside our budget she spent our money re-​designing our cabinets and then gave us estimates that were us much as 50% over the budget we went in with. Four estimates for four different types of cabinets. All considerably over budget. The one estimate that even came close (but still considerably over) was for a type of cabinet we did not want. The response we got when we let them know we were unhappy with the estimates was to suggest eliminating one element of the cabinet design we had wanted from the get go. For us, this is not very useful design help. We felt like we were led down a primrose path and then left with the option of going way over budget or looking elsewhere for our cabinets and thus delaying our project. No doubt many people opt to spend more in the interest of just moving forward. Not us, we already had misgivings about our decision to work with Custom Spaces before we got the estimate. Communication was not even close to optimal. Availability was way below par for folks that are working with deadlines. So we went elsewhere and were given some options to cut costs that did not impinge on our design at all. Yup, our project will now be delayed. Lesson learned. Even in a state of anxiety one should not ignore cues that are normally red flags. If you do go for the smiley face thing Custom Spaces may really be the right kitchen design place for you. Oh, and stay tuned, if interested, for the review of where our cabinets eventually will come from…

I worked with Daniel and Catherine on two cabinet projects — a pantry and a bedroom. It could have not been a better experience. They worked with me to turn the architect’s ideas into a three dimensional reality and really paid attention to the details. Between the two of them one can get excellent help with the aesthetic and installation/​construction details of the project and space. They were patient as I worked through all of the options. Daniel followed-​up 6 months later when I had a small problem with one pull out drawer — coming to my house to fix the problem. It is nice to work with local business owners and have the opportunity for short, more frequent meetings. They live in the area and have a real stake in the community. 18 months later and I am still pleased with the project. I highly recommend Custom Spaces.