Brookstone Builders

Richard and Matt did an outstanding job building my home in Black Mountain about ten years ago. I am considering having some additional carpentry work done, and they are by far my first choice for this work. Excellent workmanship and attention to detail!

I really enjoyed working with Brookstone (Richard and Matt to me). From the original concept that my wife and I had envisioned for our new home, through the design and layout and the permitting process...these guys did an awesome job. I especially like the colaborative way they work with clients to produce the end result the customer is hoping to achieve. Richard always had many examples on his iPad of designs to chose from when it came decision time on various things so that you could really see what something was going to look like before you made the big decisions. I would highly reccomend anyone wanting to build a craft home to consider Brookstone. I am very happy with my experience with them. update: 9/12/14 It is a shame that I have had to revise my 5 star review of Brookstone down to a 3 star review. While I am still very pleased with the overall quality of my home....I have been extremely dissappointed with the lack of follow-up on last minute details. With an Arts and Crafts style home...there are many custom details. One....not my idea....was custom rain chains. OK...they look cool, but Brookstone intalled them on 1/2 of my house. That left me 6 rain chains short. Matt would not call me back after REPEATED calls to give me any information about where these were purchased from. I am now in the process of deciding to take them down and go with downspouts and waste that money...or try to get someone else to match something that is quite custom in nature. I am saddened and quite frankly a bit shocked that Brookstone would polarize me by not returning my phone call after what I spent with them. If you use them...be sure you owe them money...otherwise they will wash their hands and leave you holding the bag at the 98% done phase.

We had the opportunities to meet with Brookstone Builders at two of their other houses they were building and we were very impressed. Thus we began our process of getting estimates and looking at plans. They were very helpful in the selection process and making modifications to the selected plans. All was going smoothly at the beginning, but as the building process continued we ran into some situations that really took the joy of building away. The problems centered around supervision, follow-up and communication. I have 3 pages of documented occurrences which caused frustration and were evidence of the builder not hearing our requests or not following up on work that was done. Not one of them would be a problem in an of itself, but the entire list added up to stress and disappointment. Be the end, we just stopped asking or correcting because we were worn out. I will share a few occurrences. All in all, we have a beautiful and well built home, but to this day I still do not feel a sense of joy or satisfaction in having this home. I should have realized there were some warning signs at the beginning as the contractor was late to every meeting we had. He even joked about this being a habit or his. It showed me that he did not value my time. One of the most frustrating occurrences was that I would talk to one of the contractors about what we wanted and then he would not remember and do something different. More than once, I suggested he write down what we had discussed so that it would get done, but he would just say "Got It!" I know they had a few projects going on which added to the confusion, but more reason to write things down. Brookstone has an additional charge for "Site Supervisor" which in our case was $7500. I asked about the charge and was told that most builders have this and that there's was actually low. Upon further investigation not all builders have this charge. This charge was over and above the 15% charge on everthing he purchased or subcontracted for. My feeling is that this is purely a junk charge and a means of making more money. I do not feel that we got our money's worth out of it. To me a Site Supervisor should plan the construction with the subs, check on the progress and then make sure it was done correctly. That is exactly what should be done for a 15% charge or a fixed fee for the entire project. I am not saying that supervision was not performed in all cases, but it was apparent in several incidences that the follow-up was not done well and I had to point the problems out to the contractor. The low in communication came when I was asking and questioning whether or not the tile had been sealed. The shower was an absolute mess and to my unskilled eye, did not believe it had been sealed. I informed the contractor of this and he sent me a message back that he talked to the sub and it had been done. I again told him that it was a mess and to me it did not look like it was done. Instead of saying he would come over and look at it and follow-up on it, he sent me a shocking e-mail saying that he and the sub would be there the next day so "I could call him a liar to his face." HOW UNPROFESSIONAL! I told him how unprofessional that response was and he came over to look at it. He admitted that it did not look like it had been done and had the sub contact me. We had a very nice and respectful conversation and the sealing had apparently been completed, but afterwards other workers left so much junk in there that it no longer looked good. This was after I was charged $747.50 to have someone come in and clean the house. I had to purchase some tile cleaner and scrubbed it over 5 times and still did not get it all off, Then I had to reseal it myself. The contractor did not offer to do it. Another problem w/ the tile was that the color of the grout was not what we ordered, but this was never noticed by the supervisor. Apparently the floor was too cold when it was applied and a process of christalization (sp?) occurred. I also has some questions about the invoices/bills. I would get an invoice which stated an amount for labor and materials which included 15% and a total due. At our first meeting to discuss the invoice, I asked to see the original bills, but this was refused because he would have to hire someone to collect these and copy them and it would cost me alot more. He said for me just to trust him. I asked him later to see the bill from one of the subs and he did not. On my final invoice I noted what appeared to be excessive charges of $2653.50. After I pointed this out to him, he went back and removed them. He also had some materials returned (tiles and grout). When I asked him if I had been refunded for those materials, he said there was no refund due as they had been returned before I was invoiced. I did not agree w/ this so I contacted the tile company to see how much was refunded and when. I was told that the refund was $91 and it was after I was invoiced. Before I could discuss this with the contractor, he told me that I was correct and he would credit me with the refund on the next invoice. Note that my refund should have been the $91 plus 15%, instead the refund was around $76. I did not bother to mention that to him. I am not saying that any of above was intentional as they may truely have been errors. In either case oversite is needed. We were told that we should be in the house before Christmas (I was hoping for Thanksgiving). One of the subs told us that there was no reason why we should not be in the house by mid December 2012 based upon his estimate of what needed to be done. Christmas came and went and I continued to pay my interest only loan to the bank. I requested that I receive the final invoice so I could finish the bank transactions to start regular payments in Feb and he said he would do that. I did not get the final invoice until early Feb, so had to pay another month of interest only. The delay from mid Dec to Feb cost me close to an extra $1000. My recommendations: Overall Brookstone Builders do a good job and most of his subs are excellent skilled craftsmen. I would recommend you have every detail and every item written down in the contract. If you make changes or plans have that in writing. Also, sign an agreement that you or the bank gets a copy of every bill so that oversight can be performed. Have it in writing a completion date w/ fines after that date. Remember, it is your money going toward construction, so make sure all is done to your desires. P.S. It is now July and there has not been follow-up or completion of my entire punch list.

We hired Brookstone Builders to build our custom home in Black Mountain. Richard and Matt were very easy to work with. They really worked hard to accomodate some of our very specific requests, many of which involved shopping for unusual fixtures or products. They allowed us to do some of the work ourselves. We are very happy with the home and the way it turned out. E.P. Minneapolis, MN

We have worked with Brookstone Builders on a couple projects at our home, and we couldn't be happier with their work. Their ability to help us with the creative side of building along with functional side was a perfect balance. They made what can sometimes be a frustrating process into something very enjoyable. We look forward to working with them on future projects.

We hired Brookstone Builders to be our general contractor for the custom built construction of our 3900 sq ft craftsman-style "Healthy Built" home in October, 2010. We broke ground the next month, construction continued through the snow-packed winter, and we took occupancy 11 months later. Richard King and Matt Smith were excellent to work with, very creative, and just as detail oriented as we are. They coordinated well with our architect and their subs were courteous and skillful (with one exception who they no longer use) and willing to go the extra mile to equal or surpass all of our expectations. Although we made many changes and upgrades during the build, Richard and Matt researched all of our ideas and made the requested adjustments accordingly. As far as building a Healthy Built home, originally we were more concerned with protecting the environment and making a smaller footprint. However, now we have benefitted additionally because we have developed some allergies and asthma and our inside air is so much cleaner and easier to breathe in! Should we need to down-size in the future, we wouldn't hesitate to use Brookstone again. For now, we couldn't be happier in our dream home!

From the onset of this project we were so impressed with the creativity and flexibility of these builders in taking our 1948 cabin and blending it with a new addition. Their dependability allowed us to put our complete trust in them while dealing with concerns long distance. The quality of the work of all involved resulted in a home we are extremely proud of. We would definitely use Brookstone Builders again and would recommend them to anyone wholeheartedly!!!