We hired Steve Solensten of Solencraft Woodworking on 1/27/2015 to build a custom entertainment center. At that time he told us that the project would take 1-1.5 days to install and 4-6 weeks to build. Finally, seven weeks later, Steve came to install the unit on 3/12/2015. He arrived at 8:30am and left at 12:30pm because of a personal errand. He left our house in a complete mess with tools and debris everywhere. He returned on 3/13/2015 at approx. 8:30am and again left our house at 12:00 noon because he stated he was to stressed out to work anymore. During the time he did work, he managed to damage our wood trim in an area that had nothing to do with the entertainment center. He used a power saw on our carpet and left screws, nails and sawdust all over our living area. He removed 2 1/4" baseboard trim and replaced it with 4" trim without consulting us because he thought it looked better. He also left debris and his ladder leaning against a piece of furniture which in turn left a grease stain on the furniture. When this was brought to his attention, he told us to steam clean it. It became apparent that every time we questioned him he would get upset and tell us that's the way he does things. He added additional pieces of lumber to the entertainment center which were never shown on the drawing plans. Again, when questioned about this, he became agitated and said he has made hundreds and hundreds of these and we are the first to ever question this. With that being said, I surmise that according to Steve, the customer has no say in what the end product will look like. After three days of incomplete and unsatisfactory work, we parted ways. I would never recommend Solencraft Woodworking to anyone. He displayed poor judgement and inaccurate measurements. This will cost us additional money to have a more skilled professional come in and fix the mistakes left by Solencraft. He also refuses to...
Read moreNew to the Woodbury Mn area, I reviewed several cabinet makers and Solencraft was one of them in Dec 2019 for a kitchen island project. I was impressed with the quality of work on the website plus locally situated in Woodbury. Steve came out and provided a very competitive bid that really stood out from other competitor bids I had obtained as his had a lot of detail for the project. He had also provided a detailed sketch of the island redo as a starting proposal that we ended up going with. We wanted to replace a 2 level island with a single level and Steve recommended all new cabinets to make the new island look original. I would say the complexity of the new island install was higher than a complete kitchen redo, as he had to match the maple doors on the outer periphery of the kitchen, color, the island had to cover the previous island so the floor would not be an issue, and removal and install of the new cabinets. Solencraft removed and then installed the new cabinets in 2 days while we were on vacation. Solencraft is a highly trust worthy company that excels at fine wood working and is very competitive on price. We are extremely happy with the result and plan to have Solencraft fabricate additional cabinets for another room in our house later in 2020. Our granite supplier was Astonia out of Rogers Mn which removed, machined and installed the granite.
Highly recommend Solencraft for a kitchen project, you won't be...
Read moreWhenever new people come into my condo and see the Murphy bed in our TV room there are rave reviews for the bed even before people realize it is a bed. Steve Solensten designed and built a custom Murphy bed for me that is gorgeous at an exceptional low price. I had the same design priced out at another company. The second company’s price was three times that of Solencraft using the same materials.
Steve was very conscientious, checking with me numerous times to make sure I was getting exactly what I wanted. The bed was installed in a new condo making the delivery and installation a bit more complicated than something being installed in a single family home. Steve and his helper made sure to take care of the surroundings they were working in. The installation was done just as the condo was completed but before we moved in so any damage done by Steve would have been immediately obvious. There was none.
I also asked him to install a set of Shoji screens that I had custom made in Montana. When he began that installation he discovered a piece of the header for the screens had been damaged so he was unable to complete that job and had to return another day once the replacement part arrived. He did not charge me extra for the additional trip to my home this even though he was not in any way responsible for the damaged part.
I could not be happier with the work...
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