Harrell Remodeling

A fairly extensive house remodel was a very disappointing experience, particularly considering the steep price. Some items were never done or not done correctly, and nine months after the project was nominally complete we simply had to give up on trying to get Harrell to finish the remaining tasks. They did some good work, which is why the rating is two stars instead of one, but overall our recommendation to those considering Harrell is to look elsewhere.

We recently had Harrell come back for a second job, complete bathroom remodel. Because it was so old, we had to have new wiring and a new electrical panel, along with new plumbing, so it really was down to the studs and build it back up again. The results are spectacular and we’re very happy with everything. Yes, they are certainly not inexpensive, but for our needs they were perfect.
(1) A home with two women and two cats: they were courteous, quiet, clean, and tried to watch out for our kitties (who mostly just hid). Even covered the pavers in the driveway and walk so they wouldn’t get damaged. As they say, they never forget it’s your home.
(2) Very little mess/​inconvenience: Their zip-​up plastic sheeting kept the mess and dust well contained, and the main contractor Paco was a doll to work with. He made sure any subcontractors were well behaved and did what they were supposed to do.
(3) On time and on schedule: The planning and design phase took a long time, but it was easy — their onsite showroom had a lot of what we wanted all in one place, or at least gave us good ideas without having to run to every kind of home store in the valley. If we encountered any area of the process that could use some improvement, it would be more guidance in balancing cost and benefit during the design phase. There were probably less expensive options we would have been just as happy with. But it was worth it to have everything ordered and on hand before the work began. Then things just moved along steadily and we weren’t left for days or weeks with half-​done work.
(4) Great communication: Not only is project manager Kristen a neat person who checks in frequently and explains anything we don’t know, but they now have an online way to keep track of what’s going on day by day, including logs and photos! Great for the road warrior who still wants to see progress and be involved in decisions at home.
(5) Owning issues: Somehow a measurement was off and there was a gap behind the cabinets that shouldn’t have been there. After researching a bit, they owned the problem and gave us a workaround, with a Plan B if we didn’t like it. The workaround turned out fine and we were able to stay on schedule and in budget.
(5) Above and beyond: While this work was being done, we had a new washer and dryer delivered and installed in the garage. We had measured the space and hookups, so even though they were bigger, they fit just fine. What we hadn’t measured was the clearance for the person-​door next to them. We discussed the situation with Paco and he agreed to re-​hang the door to swing the other way, giving us adequate clearance. There were so many little things like this that they took care of for us just because they knew it needed to be done — super service-​oriented company.
You’ll pay top dollar for Harrell service, but you will get top dollar service, communication, and care.

The experience with the Harrell Team was excellent from start to finish. They pretty much held to the budget, completion time was as expected and the progress throughout was seamless.
The house was maintained in a very clean condition despite demolition, construction, paint, plumbing, electrical etc. The on-​line connection to view daily progress was a nice touch.
There was good lines of communication and face to face contact with Sara Jorgensen, Erick Hernandez and Doug Mszanowski.
I would not hesitate to recommend my friends.

I went in to get a quote for the building of a new home that I wanted help with. I am looking to build a rental property in Mountain View that is nice, but also cost effective. I was very clear about this when I reached out to Harrell. Although the customer service I received was good, when I was given a ballpark quote, I was sorely disappointed. Lisa claimed that it would cost me «Somewhere between $ 500 and $ 1000 a square foot» to build a new home. This means that I would have to pay between a million and two million for a 2000 sq/​ft home when I already own the land (which is the most valuable thing about MV). Based on extensive research, this is so far beyond a reasonable price, I find it almost laughable. If you go to:
you can see the building costs for the state, broken down by quality of finishes and adjusted for regional differences. While I know that building in Santa Clara County is not cheap and paying for a general contractor requires that you pay a significant markup for the time and stress you save because you don’t have to do the management yourself, I would strongly suggest that you look elsewhere for construction work.

We are so thrilled with our beautiful new kitchen and family room, designed and built by Harrell Remodeling! The Harrell team combines creativity in design and solutions with the highest standards of craftsmanship and construction. Pride in the job was evident every day. Every Harrell employee we met lived up to the company standard. And the project finished ahead of schedule — a very nice surprise at the end.

The project manager responded to my message within 24 hours and sent me an estimate promptly. My project was small but I called Harrell because I trust the employees and I do not want strangers entering my home. The work was expert quality and they left the space cleaner than when they started. I felt that the price was reasonable for the quality. I will definitely use Harrell again.

DISCLOSURE: I never used their services but did meet with them about an addition/​remodel and attended a free seminar on remodeling, which I did appreciate and was quite informative.
They are on the higher end (pricing) and the one-​stop-​shop is convenient for people who don’t have the time or are worried about the remodel/​addition/​new construction process. Their past projects do look impressive. If you’re willing to do the legwork (a lot of) and spend the time, you can likely get comparable/​better quality at a much lower price. This does require you to find your own designer/​architect and contractor (s) and spend a LOT of time. But in the end, you’ll have something designed exactly (hopefully) to your specific needs (and you’ll never be able to «settle» for an off-​the-​shelf resale/​new home again. :) good luck!

Dear Harrell Remodeling
You probably don’t remember but when you did our last remodel you noticed the garage vent had been covered with stucco, and you suggested we open it. This sounded ok to me but I was also thinking any problems with fumes was sort of theoretical.
Fast forward to last week.
My wife bought a new car. It has a key fob rather than a key and more bells and whistles than a space ship. Plus it’s a bit intimidating to drive. Last Wednesday she came home after I was in bed and the next morning I stepped into the garage and the lights on her car were blazing, the motor was chugging and the air in the garage was hot and muggy. The car had been on all night long, but thanks to an open vent, no fumes.
You recognizing and bringing up the vent problem is an example of your depth of knowledge and confidence in your profession.
A lesser contractor would not have noticed or would have noticed and not said anything.
Many thanks
Jan Gabus

Had them do a small project to tile about 30 sq ft and put up grasscloth behind our fireplace. The quality was good and the guys doing the actual work were really courteous and professional. The two stars is for the customer service. Their project manager was super slow in responding and even lost track of the schedule at one point. She told us that the guys were coming one day and they never showed up then admitted she didn’t know when they were coming. I understand that there are delays with these things, was just really disappointed in the level of communication. There were other glitches and miscommunications about various details too. We provided our own materials and had enough. But they pressured us to buy more materials at one point, which added a lot of cost. In the end, we were right in the first place and were left with a lot of left over stuff (Harrell subsequently gave us a modest refund on some of the unused grasscloth but we were still over budget because of them).
The biggest problem is that they charge top dollar so we were expecting top service. I can’t imagine using these guys again, especially for the bigger jobs we have coming up like bathrooms, kitchen and downstairs remodel.

First of all, I should make it clear that I did not use Harrell Remodeling for any real work, but I still have a lot good things to say about them. It all started a couple of years ago when my husband accidentally saw an Ad in the local newspaper. It was an Ugly Kitchen Contest held by HR. Since we just started to think about remodeling our kitchen and we already had the digital pictures, we casually dropped the photos in to them by email and forgot about it. A couple of months later, we were invited among contests from 20+ entries to a nice and lighthearted dinner. We all had fun, and to our surprise, we «won» the second place! (Surprised, because we thought many other kitchens looked «uglier» than ours from the slideshow they were projecting during the dinner. Ha, what do you know.) When I told people about the experience, they tended to dismiss it as a marketing gimmick, but I would explain that throughout the experience (there would be more later), I never felt any pressure from them. Well, yeah, I would not have gotten to learn about them if not for that contest, but to be honest, having seen the beautiful work they do in some photo slideshows, I doubt many of these «ugly kitchen» owners (like us) are the right client-​tale for the firm anyway. We for one acting as our own GC and did most of the work ourselves. I think they really take joy in educating the community. (We learned about universal design from them and have incorporated some ideas in our design.)
Among the wonderful prizes we won at the contest was a free two-​hour consultation from one of their designers. Genie came out to our house, which is inconveniently located quite far away. I told her that we would most likely do most of the work ourselves and would want to make the most out of the two hours of her time to learn from her experience. Oh wow, it was one of best two-​hours I spent with anybody!
I could tell, Genie genuinely wanted to help out. She went through almost every aspect of a kitchen remodeling with me and offered a wealth of information, which I took notes of. In the end (a year later), many of my decisions came out of the notes, for example, the faucet choice (Hansgrohe), the granite shop (All Architectural Stone), and the granite fabricator (Marble and Stone Solutions) to name a few. I’m so happy about these choices that I feel grateful to Genie, and to Harrell Remodeling. I truly believe that I could trust them to do good work. I know that if I lived closer and could afford a professional construction firm, Harrell Remodeling would the first one I call.

Harrell’s produced a beautiful plan for my bathroom remodel which would
bring it into a handicapped situation, but still be quite lovely in design and execution.
Their representatives were always on time, easy to speak to and responsive to any of my questions or concerns. This company is the tops in remodeling and was recommended by everyone whom I asked for references. YOu can’t go wrong with them.
They are as good as their word and treat every customer with care and consideration.
The cut-​rate fellows need to be avoided as you get what you pay for is really true!
It’s a pleasure to recommend them.

I put in four new windows in my home with another windows company (quite expensive) but each and every one of them turned out to be irregular — noticeable by the naked eye. That was a lousy company to deal with. In the course of filing a claim with my credit card company, I had to ask a second opinion. It was also good for myself to get an estimate of how much «damage» the other company caused — I wanted to know how much it would cost me to fix these windows.
Most other companies wouldn’t bother to «fix another company’s mess» (who knows, maybe it’s a small circle and full of mafias). But Harrell had been very good to respond to my questions right from the start. I had been busy so I dragged out the whole process for months, but in the meantime, I get to talk to various staff members from Harrell (due to some going on vacation). They were all very friendly! Finally, I scheduled with a project manager to come by for an estimate. He was extremely detailed and very knowledgeable. He carefully measured the window frames with a tape measure, a steel square, and a laser beam level. He patiently showed me what’s wrong — the irregularities are extremely obvious, showing that the other company had extremely poor workmanship (well, if these defects are noticeable to my untrained eye, of course you could measure them. But I wanted a quantitative second opinion).
I was very impressed that he was also very honest: one problem is that a pair of windows in a bedroom are ¼″ offset vertically from each other. He told me that it would cost me $ 1000 to reinstall one of them to level them off, and it’s not worth the money — he offered to compensate the defects visually by just adjusting the window frames, a smaller job that saves me the $ 1000.
Even though in the end I didn’t hire Harrell for the job (because Mastercard sucks and didn’t reimburse ANY money to me), I would highly recommend Harrell due to my great experience with them for the repair estimate.

I have had several personal experiences with Harrell Remodeling’ s service which left me very impressed.
First, my wife and I had been checking out the new home market. In our area, this usually means that the home is a fixer upper. We located a house in Emerald Hills that appeared to need a little bit of work, but we were uncertain of how much it would really entail. Harrell Remodeling went out of their way to ensure that we knew exactly how much work a remodel would involve. Plus, their response time was lightening fast– within 24 hours of my phone call they had already inspected the property, produced an estimate, and reported on important construction issues! I was very impressed with their responsiveness and the thorough evaluation of the costs involved. We decided not to go through with this purchase, in part because of what Harrell Remodeling was able to show us about the home, which was not immediately apparent from the disclosures.
Second, Harrell Remodeling has performed a number of repairs at my office building in downtown Menlo Park, as arranged by my landlord. I work in a very old (c. 1901) building, and we had a sliding door that was sticking. Initially, we had hired a repair man to attempt to fix the door. The repairs worked for a few months, and then the door subsequently became dislodged. We then hired Harrell Remodeling to do the job. About one year on, the door still slides perfectly. Harrell Remodeling also installed a number of exterior lights on our property, and the job was very well done. I was particularly impressed by the professionalism of their workers whenever I passed by on my way to and from the office.
Finally, my real estate agent has referred Harrell Remodeling to a number of different clients of his. From his experience, you can always rely on the quality being top notch and mistake — free.
Because of these excellent experiences, I can wholeheartedly recommend Harrell Remodeling.

I’d like to review this place based on experience but unfortunately the designer canceled our appointment. She scheduled and then called back saying she will need to reschedule because something came up. And I never heard from her again.
not very professional at all. If you’re not interested, just say so.

While I was initially impressed by the contact I had with Harrell Remodeling, I’m appalled at the poor responsiveness of their staff. Two weeks ago, one of their representatives came out to do some measurements to give us an estimate on a good-​sized, but not whole-​house project. She assured me she’d get me an estimate soon thereafter, but I’ve heard nothing and my attempts to contact her have elicited nothing. I had high hopes for Harrell based on the examples of work I’d seen, but will be looking elsewhere. It seems from the other reviews that mine must be an isolated incident, but it’s disappointing nonetheless.

I hired Harrell Remodeling to do a minor make over. Floors, colors, light fixtures etc. Projects like these are never fun because of all the headaches in dealing with the contractors. Not with Harrell Remodeling! They made this project a breeze. One of the workers got injured while doing the work, and I was on a time crunch, Iris (the owner) assured me that the project will complete on time, even if she has to pay over time. Now that’s CUSTOMER SERVICE!!! Harrell Remodeling you have me as your customer for life.

As a real estate professional with 20 years of experience, I have seen them all — from terrific to terrible.
Harrell Remodeling is terrific! When they say, «We never forget it’s your home.», they mean it. In doing the design and extensive remodel of our Palo Alto home, they were professional, creative, courteous, on time, and on budget.
I have referred them to my clients who have also been greatly impressed. They have earned my highest recommendation.