**If you don't believe this post, check around other sites. I know there are a few other similar stories on this forum about Mid-State and I know Angie's list has more of the same**

In my opinion, every step of the process with Mid-State was a battle. The quality of work from the mid-state contractors was good, but the quality from the sub-contractors was generally poor. The take-away I had was that they might be ok to use if you are just replacing cabinets, but for any project with any sort of complication, I would not recommend them.

Best part of the whole ordeal was when I finally got the owner (who avoided me for most of the month of October) to agree to a meeting to review the items that we had a problem with. He came to the house and we ran through all of my items. Then i wanted to have a rationale discussion about where we felt that additional charges were unwarranted and to come to an agreement for the final payment. The owner got emotional and all he could say to me was "you just have nothing nice to say". Then he stormed out of the house, almost forgetting his jacket, and ripped the Mid-State sign off the front lawn. He never finished the rational conversation I tried to start. He just sent a written letter threatening a lien on the house. For fear of a legal battle we just paid them.

We used Mid-state to completely renovate our kitchen. The renovation included all the usual stuff such as new cabinets, counters, appliances, tile backsplash, electrical work and plumbing work. We also needed to open up the floor plan, so we had them take down a wall to an adjacent room. It happened to be a load bearing wall, so we ended up replacing it with a beam.

We chose Mid-State because we were impressed with their design/build capabilities at first. Their contracting representative and their design person both seemed great during the bid stage (before we signed any agreements). However, we were not impressed when we got into the project and the headaches (and extra money charged to us) was not worth it at all.

If you don't already know, Mid-state is set up so that they have one guy that does the design, and another guy who coordinates the construction work. We felt that there was little to no communication between these individuals. And, personally, i picked up on a vibe that they didn't like eachother on a personal level either (that's just an opinion). Either way, if they don't work well together, then things get missed.

Below is a list of the highlights of what was a problem in our minds:

*Over and over again we were told that they weren't going to nickel and dime us, but when it came down to it, if it wasn't specifically in the contract, it wasn't happening. I know this is true for any contractor (in theory) but Mid-state made a specific point of telling us not to worry. Bottom line, no matter how obvious or silly it may seem, get everything specifically written out in the contract.

*The designer fought with us over an exhausting string of emails about whether or to not to order a 24" cabinet to house our in-cabinet microwave (which was listed by the manufacturer to fit in a 24" cabinet). The designer claimed it wouldn't fit, but a quick conversation with their foreman (when we finally got the two of them in a room together) said it would be fine. What i took from this is that there is ZERO communication between Mid-states designer and the foreman. Isn't that supposed to be a perk of using a design/build company?

* Their construction guy did a walk thru to put the estimate together. We have an open basement below and he pointed out that a pipe appeared to be rising up through one of the walls we wanted to move. We said, ok, well put it in your quote if you think so. The owner, when we did the pre-construction meeting (the day before work started) again pointed out that the pipe would have to move. So you would think they accounted for it. NOPE! We ended up getting charged an extra $500 to move it because it was, as they put it, and "unforeseen condition". When i asked how it was unforseen if they SAW it before the work started, the owner could not give me a straight answer.

*We purchased a nice, polished marble tile for the backsplash. Their tile installer did not install it level, so we have tiles installed at different depths. It looks like you could push one and a secret door should open to the batcave. See the picture attached to the post.

*We purchased all of our appliances and had them in the garage a month before the work started. For our garbage disposal, the electrician did not install a switch for the disposer, and did not install the power cord on the disposal. The plumber piped it in with no way of getting power to it. So the setup was useless! We had to go buy a different disposer that did not require a switch and have the plumber re-pipe it. You would think this was mis-coordination on Mid-state's part and they would say Oops and make it right. NOPE. They sent us a $200 bill from the plumber for the re-piping.

*We had linoleum in our kitchen before, so we wanted to replace it with hardwood to match the rest of the first floor. Mid-state supposedly checked what the existing wood type was that we had, so they could match it. I can't vouch for whether or not they did this and just got bad advise from their wood guy, but we had several other contractors tell us that we had white oak existing in the house. Mid-state got red oak delivered to our house. You could see that it didn't really match the rest of the house. We had to ask them check one more time. This time we saw them take a large sample of the existing wood with them. After that we came home to see that the red oak delivery was replaced with white oak. So turns out that they either didn't adequately check, they took a sample that was too small to accurately tell what the wood was, or they are using a wood guy that didn't know his stuff. Luckily we caught their mistake before it was installed, but the takeaway i had was that we had to double check everything.

*After the floors were installed and the last coat put on, you can still see pock marks when the light shines on it. Did not have this when we re-did floors on the 2nd floor through a different contractor.

*Regarding the cost of the floors, they priced out the installation of the new flooring at $12 per sf, which includes labor, materials, and 3 coats of finish. Of that cost, they said that $5 of it was for the wood. We had a change order after the project started for them to re-finish our existing floors. At first they gave us a quote that was just under 3 times the cost of the new floor installation. So to re-iterate, they tried to charge us more money to REFINISH floors than it costs to INSTALL AND FINISH floors. Ridiculous? When we kept pushing them on the price, they came down a bit, but still said that refinishing was $7 per sf. So then if you think about it for a full install the wood is $5 per sf, and the finishing labor is $7 per sf, then you're already at $12 per sf. Installation cost is $0? Confused? So were we. The take-away here is that we felt that no one at Mid-State could give us a straight answer on the cost, and why there was such a discrepancy.

*The sub-contractors did a lot of work in the un-finished basement to run wires, plumbing, etc. We had all of our stuff stored down there out of the way. We also had a sink down there that we were trying to use during construction. The subs had zero respect for the fact that we were living there. Construction debris was always left all over the place. The plumber splashed murky water all over boxes of our stuff. Some boxes were open and some pillows and clothes were left out (as we were told to store things down there). We had sawdust over everything. Even had some of the great-stuff expanding foam drip down on the TV we had stored down there. Oh, and they dropped something on our freezer down there and dented the lid. Mentioned the mess a couple times to the foreman during construction. He would go down and clean up what he could but it would be a mess when the subs came back again.

*We asked that Mid-state put painting in the estimate. They added it into the list with the rest of the subcontractor prices, which led us to believe it was included in the final price. They snuck a clause in the contract elsewhere that says painting is not included. We missed it, so shame on us i guess. It was $1800 that they tried to charge us extra. We said no thank you, and did the painting on our own. Take-away is to read the contract thoroughly (should do this with any contractor i guess though)

*The contract called out that baseboard moldings would be installed to match existing moldings as best as possible. Mid-state apparently meant this that they would install wood moldings, but never stained them to match the existing. It seemed to me to be a lame way of avoiding having a painter come in and stain them to finish the job properly.

*Some positive items I'll say are that they were fast. They did get the subs lined up well to do the work in a timely manner. Their construction person was the most responsive. He would always answer the phone or call me back promptly. During the design phase, the designer was good about sitting with us and going through designs in CAD to get different ideas. We had an island put in and the stone slab we originally were going to use broke when they went to cut it. So the designer was really good about coordinating with the stone place to quickly find a replacement for us and he even set up a convenient time for us to go to the yard to see the stone. The designer did seem to want to do the right thing where he could.