SethAnne Studios

When we decided to have the ugly aluminum siding on our house removed and the original 1925 wood siding restored on our Del Ray home, we asked folks around the neighborhood for recommendations. Everyone warned us about SethAnne Studios. The word on the street was that they do beautiful work, but they never saw a budget or a timeline that they could meet. When I interviewed the owner/​project manager Tom, I told him that his reputation was mixed and I asked him to please be honest about the cost and timeline. He ASSURED me that he wouldn’t let me down. We even decided to pad his original estimate by 15% just in case there were any unexpected problems. (We did encounter a larger portion of replacement siding required than we originally thought, which accounted for an extra $ 1500, which had no problem with). We told him that we would hire them because his workers do such nice work (we went to several other completed houses) .
What we did not know is that SethAnne Studios was so over-​booked and poorly managed that they had to hire a completely different company (Avalon Builders) to come do all the carpentry and yet another company to do the painting. SethAnne’s workers never even touched our house! When we got the bill, he billed us for the original amount, PLUS, a mark-​up because he had to sub-​out the job! He went over budget by almost 33%!!! To add insult to injury, he billed us for his personal time (project management) at 95 bucks an hour for 8 hours a week! We paid him nearly 1000 dollars a week to POORLY manage our project! Plus, they added costs along the way which I feel were wasteful, like the 395 bucks for dumpster rental (they never brought a dumpster). They billed us 5000 dollars for 24 linear feet of porch railing. Really? (I didn’t’ pay that)
We asked very early on for grey paint. We gave them samples of what we wanted, but they thought our house should be grey-​brown, so they painted 4 samples of brown (and one blue?) on the side of our house (2×2 ft squares) and charged us 125 bucks for 5 quarts of paint! We didn’t WANT brown paint, but I suspect that if they had been able to recommend a color, they would have been able to charge us the 2500 «design fee». We refused to pay that, since they didn’t «design» anything.
At every turn, these people have been unprofessional, never rude or obnoxious, more like clueless.
Now, here we sit, nearly two months late on our project, the house has been painted and he still can’t find the time to have the workers come hang the shutters. They promised us to have them done tuesday, but since it rained they couldn’t hang them. Wednesday was bright and sunny, but still no shutters… why…because now the workers were on to some other project! We’re back down the list again.
These people have no idea how to manage a project or to meet a budget. They over-​promise under-​deliver. They don’t have enough workers to finish jobs on time and should not take on more than one job at a time because they lack the management skills to juggle multiple projects successfully.
I would warn anyone against using this company to work on your home. My experience is exactly what all the others warned me about, but none of them ever went as far as to say «don’t use them». Well, I am saying, I will never use them again and if I were you, I’d look elsewhere for home repairs/​design/​construction in Del Ray. SethaAnne Builders will disappoint you every step of the way.