AK Designer Home Improvement

My aunt decided to downsize and optimistically bought a fixer-​upper to save some money. She’s a spry 80 but she needed *a little* help from her two nephews. We both live out of town and we took our holidays to help her. Among many jobs, the flooring needed to be replaced throughout. In early December (2014), we received three initial estimates from local places in Maple Ridge.
Initially we weren’t going to go with AK Designer Home Improvement because they had almost zero web presence or on social media. I couldn’t find any reviews and they had only been in business for a year. We didn’t like that and thought it was a bit odd. We had seriously considered one of their competitors, who had many, many good reviews, but in the end they had to order in the flooring from the USA and it wasn’t going to arrive until mid-​January. It was just too long of a wait. So we decided to bite the bullet and take a chance with AK Designer after having a second conversation with the co-​owner Karen. And in our particular case we liked the carpet they carried better as well. And the price was $ 100 less expensive.
AK also needed to order the carpet in from the USA and while it would take a couple of weeks, Karen committed to us to having the carpet installed before Christmas and she was good to her word.
We had the gas fireplace replaced by another local company. The other company (not AK) removed the fireplace surround and apparently the installation we paid for didn’t include the re-​installation of the fireplace surround (which was news to us). So there was a 4′ x 4′ ugly hole in the freshly painted wall. There was some issue with them of finding a sub-​contractor to finish the job. That left us scrambling to find a sub-​contractor before Christmas. It was an unexpected surprise and we weren’t too happy about it.
AK also installs kitchen cabinets, etc. so I asked Karen if AK could do it and she said yes they would be happy to. We chose some materials, she gave us an estimate, and we scheduled the install. At this point my stress levels were pretty high. My vacation was over, I was taking extra days off to work on the townhouse, spending my weekends there, and Christmas was in a few weeks. When Karen came over to do the estimate, we were looking over some paperwork in the kitchen and she noticed some broken laminate trim on the counter top and said her installer would fix it for us when he did the fireplace surround and at no cost to us (her idea). It wasn’t a big thing, but I was happy to accept and it was just one less thing we had to do. She said ‘We’re here to make your life easier’. I wish the rest of the contractors we hired had this same mantra.
The installers were great. The carpet, the lino, baseboards, and the fireplace surround turned out very well and my aunt couldn’t be happier which is what we wanted. They showed up on time, did their work quickly, efficiently, and workmanship was good. Karen was in touch with us every step of the way. Everything went as planned on time and on schedule, no surprises, and the price was right.
The only issue we had was a mismeasurement on the carpet. Being a Berber carpet the pattern is directional needs to be lined up on the seams. As a result there was one nook in the living room next to the fireplace that required an extra seam. It now sits underneath the TV stand, no big deal.
Overall we were impressed with the service and the only minor issue we had was the carpet seam. We’d hire them again in a heartbeat.