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April Interiors | Interior Design in Austin TX
Of 29 ratings posted on 4 verified review sites, April Interiors | Interior Design in Austin TX has an average rating of 4.69 stars. This earns a Rating Score™ of 95.90.
Working with April Interiors has been one of the worst experiences we have ever had. We worked with her for just under a year, and to be honest things moved painfully slow, her work was such poor quality, her business acumen is less than stellar, and she has overtime become a nightmare for our family that will just not go away. We went into this relationship with her excited to create a few design elements in our home, and have been left with incomplete work that is sloppy, quite literally falling apart, and with damaged furnishings.
During our initial consultation we discussed having April design the accent wall, and render custom metal work drawings. We also discussed having her oversee our projects and handle them start to finish. We knew this was going to be expensive, but we felt we needed someone to lookout for us during this process, make sure quality sub contractors were used, and ensure things were built and installed safely and to code. What she did not disclose to me was that her husband’s company (FTGU) was going to be our sub contractor on all aspects of each design element. (April will say that she 100% discloses this information every time- but it is not in my memory and not in any of her email correspondence to us or in our contract).
This relationship would have not ever been discovered or have been a problem for us except that work started going horribly wrong from the very beginning, and then she started billing us additional for her time to correct their mistakes. Every aspect of this project was wrong to some degree by no fault of ours, and each time we voiced our concerns to her about the errors - she first acknowledged the mistakes and then billed us additional time for handling the logistics to make it right. To be clear, this was not us changing our minds or changing course or unseen structural problems in our home, this was us pointing out incomplete and flat out wrong work done by her crew and careless mistakes. We understood from the very beginning that we were charged an “hourly design fee” for her to oversee construction, and were happy to pay, but we just cannot comprehend how we could be charged so much additional (to the tune of several hundred and sometimes thousands of dollars each month) for her to facilitate correcting work that was done wrong by her husband’s company. How can she have our best interest at hand if it is her husbands company doing the work? What is the incentive to make sure that work is done correctly, if she gets to continue to bill for correcting FTGU’s mistakes?
We wanted to redo our fireplace areas with new mantles and firewood holders, finish an outdoor shower area, and create an accent wall. Below are just a few of their errors:
Her team came to our home removed our old mantles and cut into our master bedroom wall to redo the riggers. Her team mis measured the riggers and cut the new mantles in the wrong spot for hanging. Because of this the only option was to secure the mantels very uneven, and they have already since come lose. After patching up the hole in our wall they left it unpainted - in two separate areas. In the end we were left with crooked mantels that were stained the wrong color (was supposed to be Jacobean to match our existing beams and doors). See photos
The metal work that was installed over our fireplace opening literally exploded out of our rock wall 3 days after it was installed due to it’s weight, and it was not the agreed upon matte black powder coat finish. See photos
Her team sanded over a freshly painted wall done by another contractor in our home without asking. We did not ask them to correct it, but we certainly did not expect to be billed for her inspecting the erroneously sanded areas. See photos
Her team incorrectly installed light sconces on our accent wall three times. All three times they were crooked, and twice had to be removed because of scratches and paint/caulking that transferred onto the black light fixtures. Initially they tried to paint over it with a paint pen without telling us. This was very visible and extremely frustrating because we had just paid several hundred dollars to April to have the light fixtures powder coated black.
She told me that I was not allowed to be in my own home while work was happening, and this was after her team damaged our walls unnecessarily, damaged our light fixtures, and installed warped fiber boards in our outdoor shower. April charged us an hourly fee which totaled several hundred dollars to inspect the shower and facilitate logistics of having it redone correctly.
These are certainly not all of the errors. We understand that construction is not perfect and there is an element of human error involved every time. What we cannot stand about this situation is that we are literally being billed hourly (still as we speak) for her team to correct wrong work, for her delivery team to deliver our paid for furniture and art that is not damaged upon arrival. We also are still being billed for storing said furniture for safe keeping and inspections, though both times it was delivered it was damaged.
During the entire process our complaints have fallen on deaf ears. April will and has acknowledged the mistakes by her crew, but continues to say things like “We’ve all learned something here.” This may be true, but my family is the the one hemorrhaging money by the hour for her team’s mistakes each month. Normally, I would think that the subcontractor be held responsible when they make preventable mistakes. Since the subcontractor is her husbands company, the expenses have fallen on us. April and FTGU continue to take zero responsibility for their mistakes and damages done to our home.