#Kitchen Galleries - Interior Design - Santa Clara, CA - Reviews - Photos

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So, I don t give out five star reviews to anyone.  I also saw a lot of reviews here from one- or two-review people and wondered if they were… Read More

So, I don t give out five star reviews to anyone.  I also saw a lot of reviews here from one- or two-review people and wondered if they were all real.  But I figured it couldn t hurt to go over and scope out the showroom on my own, because I usually have pretty good radar for whether someone is full of it or not.

After talking to Marina for about fifteen minutes I decided I wanted to have these guys do my kitchen counters.  In the first meeting (total cold-call walk in) I paid a lot of attention to the questions she was asking me and the information she was giving me, because in my book unprompted detail tells me a lot about how detail-oriented someone is.  She told me all about stainless steel sink gauge *without me having to ask* -- which told me I could stop worrying about having to understand all the details on my own and just let her make recommendations.

I gave her my measurements of the kitchen and she had the quartz guys put together a quote for it.  The quote was *under* the estimate I got from another company in San Carlos last year.  What s more, it also included tear-out and plywood leveling, which the other company had pretty much brushed off as well, that s your problem, we don t do that.  So I said, what the heck, let s do this.

Tile counters came out on a Friday; quartz counters were installed two weeks later.  No delays, no snags.

Kitchen Galleries also didn t give me trouble about only wanting to do my counters, unlike a couple of other places (et tu, Home Depot) who wanted me to rip out the whole kitchen because leveling existing cabinets is too hard.  Sure, I d do the whole thing if I had 40 grand, but the cabinets are only 15 years old and in good shape, it s just that revolting white tile and mildewed grout I wanted to get rid of.

(And as it turned out, my plywood was in good enough shape AND level, so they didn t have to replace it and knocked it off the price!)

KG also recommended a plumber to help me disconnect and reconnect the sink and various appliances (no DIY er I).  That was as close as it got to hidden costs in the remodel, well, aside from me deciding I was under budget and thus totally deserved a new dishwasher and a sexy stainless steel faucet, air gap and soap dispenser.  Ahem.

The only hiccup in the whole process was Marina switched computers and for awhile I wasn t getting any emails from her even though her computer swore it was sending them.  That kinda sucked.   Other than that, all communications were extremely prompt and I never had to chase her down for something.  And anyway, I totally prefer emails to phone tag -- she d often reply within the hour, too.

Anyway, I am very pleased with this remodel, and like I said, I never hand out five-star reviews.  Check em out.  Sure, you could wear yourself out researching stone guys and plumbers and installers and demolition crews and haulaway services, or you can just go with good people who know good people, and I m definitely in the latter camp.  And I didn t even do anything requiring bigtime design skills!

The showroom is a bit stealth -- expect to pass it by once, the sign is really hard to see in the second floor windows.