StarCraft Custom builders | Custom Designed & Built Kitchens, Baths, Additions and Home Remodeling

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Thanks For Your Feedback
OH MY!! A wonderful web site!! I am not building for 3-4 years but I want to have all this reference information when I need it. I will bookmark the site, so please don't change it!… [Sorry, Mrs. S., we change it almost every day. Ed.]
N.S., Summerville, SC
[Your] article on Craftsman houses [Arts and Crafts Styles: Craftsman, Prairie and Four-Square] changed my mind about selling our 1928 Craftsman bungalow. We love owning our very own "American work of art"….
D.R., Lincoln, NE
WOW! You guys really don't pull many punches, do you? I really loved your faucet ratings [Sources of Supply: Faucet Ratings] as much for the irreverent writing style as for the good information. I'll bet you get hate mail from faucet manufacturers… [Yes, we do. Ed.]
E.L., Washington, DC
This article [The Thirty-One Kitchen Design Rules] is excellent and I would recommend it to anyone planning a kitchen or remodel.
L.S., Roanoke, VA
I have been working on a new kitchen design plan for some time now…and this pretty much covers everything I've been considering. For someone just starting the design process…this is a gold mine! Love the articles…we want more :)
K.W., Friendswood, TX
Love your articles! They're educational, cover all the bases, and they're entertaining as well!
C.D., Atlanta, GA
You are making me wish I lived in Lincoln. Your articles are excellent.
L. J., Athens, OH
Your site is amazing. I wish you were closer to Virginia.
H. L., Arlington, VA
I just wanted to tell you I just tonight found your website and am up way past my bedtime. Incredible info, incredible site. What a great idea-sharing place and what a delight to find. From unconventional kitchens to logical lighting throughout the home to that wardrobe wall in the bedroom … to all the ideas for flooring, counters and the little details in all those areas… I was particularly excited about a tile outdoor deck … You could have kept all this information to yourself. Thank you so much for sharing.
B. M., Harrison, AR

The Very Best of the Very Latest

The very latest products appear in trade journals long before they show up in Home Depot or Lowes. Of the many products recently introduced, here are our picks of the best, the interesting, the different and the unusual.

The Almost Right Refrigerator
Perlick Refrigerator

The Perlick undercabinet refrigerator with pull-out shelving. For more information go to Perlick.com and battle the overdone "Flash-y" web site for more information. For many years we have wondered why refrigerators don't include pull-out shelves.

Finding that bottle of sandwich dills at the back of the shelf has always meant spelunking and a lot of moving stuff around. And let's not mention the leftovers that get shoved to the back and forgotten until they turn to yuck.

Recently a company we had never heard of, Perlick, began advertising their line of bar-style undercounter refrigerators with pull-out shelves. While a step in the right direction, these are not refrigerators suitable for most kitchens. Whirlpool Group makes a partial pull-out "easy glide" shelf, and GE used to make a revolving shelf years ago, but it has not been offered for a while.

With all the junk they put in refrigerators nowadays, like motorized elevator shelves that adjust up and down (stunningly gimicky and almost useless!), why has no one thought about a truly needed and obvious improvement — pull-out shelves? They make all sorts of pull-out bins, what's wrong with these guys? Lack of imagination? Do they need yet another spur from Sanyo or LG?

Finally, A Clogless Drain?
PermaFlow Drain

Proving that just when you think there is nothing clever left to invent, someone comes up with a product that is smart and innovative; the PermaFLOW self-cleaning p-trap eliminates most drain clogs by generating turbulence that keeps drains free of debris. But if it does clog, a manual wiper clears any debris. Lose a ring down the sink? The transparent PermaFLOW p-trap makes it easy to find and fish out. Goodbye Drano®, hello PermaFLOW. What will they think of next???

Watch the video or visit the web site.

Continues…

By accessing this web site, you agree to our Terms of Service.

We do not endorse products or services. We host Google advertising to help defray the cost of maintaining this site, but we do not necessarily recommend any of the products or services advertised.

Like the Big Guys…

We give our workers colorful, monogrammed coffee mugs…

… Just not ours.

What Our Customers Say…
Patty E., Lincoln, NE

I love my new kitchen! It is everything I dreamed it could be, and more… StarCraft came up with some amazing design ideas that have made my kitchen uniquely wonderful… I was very impressed with their creative designs, their excellent workmanship and I love the quality of my cabinetry.

Micki W., Grand Island, NE

Every builder claims to give a warranty. But where are they when something breaks? StarCraft got right on my tile problem and fixed it quickly and without any questions…

Catherine T., Lincoln, NE

… but the best compliment came from an architect friend of ours who commented that our new kitchen looked like it could be original to the house… Your ability to make a modern kitchen fit the period of our restored 1921 craftsman bungalow was awesome…

Julieanne K., Firth, NE

Our new deck is wonderful and so is our finished basement. Your workers were polite and professional. I like the fact that they cleaned up every day and took extraordinary pains to keep the construction mess out of the rest of my house.

Edwin M., Redmund, WA

The new cabinets are terrific. Our carpenter was amazed at how well they fit in our kitchen with only minor adjustments. We are delighted to find that workmanship like yours is still available at a reasonable price…

Jean B., Lincoln, NE

All of you did a great job… My kitchen is beautiful and just like it looked in your designs. Thank you.

Fancy mugs cost money — money that we can use instead to keep our costs low and our work affordable. We stay away from the frills — company t-shirts, monogrammed jackets, colorful billboards, fancy showrooms — they're just not us, not our style, not the way we do things.

Click here to contact us for more information.

Kitchen Planning Book

For a very limited time, get your own personal copy of our popular, fact filled StarCraft Kitchen Planner, our detailed guide to designing and building beautiful and functional kitchens. Don't miss out.

Limited availabity, restrictions may apply.

Which is why, around our very unfancy over-the-warehouse office, you will see stacks of beautiful, colorful, monogrammed coffee mugs — absolutely, positively not a single one of them ours.

We much prefer to put our money in our work. We build beautiful kitchens and baths, the very finest custom cabinets, high-tech home offices and home theaters; elegant decks, and additions of all kinds, efficient closet, and storage systems, hand-made, high-quality built-in furniture sturdy garages and garden buildings of every size and kind.

And we do it for less money than the big guys — you know, the ones with the fancy mugs — about 20% less on average. Our reputation for excellence, affordable high-quality workmanship and on-time, on-budget completion is second to none.

We have been an Honor Roll member of the Better Business Bureau every year since the program began. We take being professional very seriously.

So, whatever your remodeling plans, big, small or somewhere in between, we can help you design them and build them so you can afford them.

The Old House Specialists
We love old houses, and it shows in our work. We respect the craftsmanship and painstaking detail, the fine mouldings and woodwork, and the hand-made doors and windows. Old houses are a big part of our national heritage — representing whole historical eras and a truly massive investment in energy and resources much too precious to be just cast away and replaced. Matching Your Architectural Style

Go to "Coordinating Heritage Architecture and Interior Styling"

How do you update your kitchen or bath and still keep your home's historical character? Learn more about coordinating your interior spaces with your house's heritage architecture here.

An old house is not just shelter. It is living history with its own personality, quirks and foibles. It groans in the winter wind, creaks in the summer sun. It sags a little here and a little more there, so nothing is ever quite straight or square or perfect. Unlike the new McMansions and look-alike tract colonials, it has a legacy of character and charm. None of us can imagine living anywhere else — squeaky floors, sticky sashes and all, because with these little quirks come 100-year-old sycamores and lush, mature gardens in neighborhoods where being neighborly is just how things have always been, and still are.

Over many years we have become the experts at updating period homes while preserving the feel, the style, the craftsmanship and the spirit of a bygone era. We can seamlessly incorporate a modern kitchen, bath or addition into your period home while making it look as though it was always a part of your house. We are the masters at squeezing the very last ounce of functionality out of under-size kitchens and tiny baths, of reorganizing closet storage to hold twice as much in the same space, and of designing additions that look like they were a part of your house from the day it was built.

Our designers can create just the right look and feel, and our stylists can help you with colors, materials and textures suitable for the era of your great old home. So whether your home is a classic Victorian masterpiece, a folksy Craftsman bungalow or a comfy post-war cottage, we can help you preserve it, enlarge it, modernize and update it; without sacrificing the very special look and feel you fell in love with in the first place.

Our Design/Build Partnership
We are full-service design-builders. We do more than just build with a marriage of careful old-time workmanship and the most up-to-date techniques; we can also help you turn your ideas for your home into a plan that fits both your needs and your pocketbook.

Design-building is a partnership. You have the ideas, we have the technologies required to turn those ideas into a beautiful, livable space. Our Design Service features the very latest architectural CAD software that allows us to plan your project and show you in full-color, photo-realistic images what it will look like when it is finished.

You can view it from any angle, get a detailed look at any feature, and examine it from every imaginable perspective.

Why guess? Make sure you love it before we build it.

Realistic computer images let you see your finished project long before we actually start building. It's much easier — and a lot cheaper — to make changes in the computer before we start construction. Click here for more on kitchen and bathroom design.

Construction Management
Our Construction Management Service relieves you of the burden of supervising and managing a complex building project and places the responsibility and the risk where it ought to be — in the hands of trained and experienced professionals.

A number of independent university studies have shown that the coordinated, comprehensive design-build process can save you from 6% to 40% over the conventional construction process.

Fixtures by Duravit

A small bath can be remodeled into a gractious and elegant room.

Just because your bathroom is small does not mean we cannot remake it into a functional, gracious and elegant room — the envy of your friends and neighbors. Click here for more bathrooms. We have honed our skills over more than thirty years of commercial and residential building and remodeling experience. We keep up with the latest techniques, use the most advanced machine tools and the newest engineered materials. But we are also intimately familiar with fine hardwoods and the old hand-crafting tools: frame saws, scratch beads, spoke shaves, jack planes, and molders. We can produce any look from the most high-tech ultra-modern home office to an exact copy of great-grandma's armoire.

Our craftsmanship and experience ensure that when we're done, it will be precisely as you imagined it could be.

Contact Us to Get Started
So please enjoy our web site. We have tried to make it as interesting and informative as possible. It contains a wealth of information for the beginning remodeler as well as the experienced veteran, including a growing number of original remodeling articles written by seasoned remodeling professionals that we believe will help you get started visualizing and planning for your own home improvement project. We hope you find them worth reading.

We have no sales manager, we have no sales-people. Anyone you talk to in our company is a hands-on, veteran construction professional with many years of experience who will be happy to work with you to make your remodeling dream come true.

So, if you are thinking about remodeling or just have some questions, contact us. We'd love to tell your more about our work over a cup of pretty-good coffee.

Just don't expect a fancy coffee mug.

Please visit these excellent sites for more fine craftsmanship and useful information.

Sand Creek Post & Beam	Sand Creek Post & Beam is the North America's premier provider of authentic, post & beam building kits . Whether your need is for a new home, horse barn, garage, workshop or even a gambrel, discover how Sand Creek Post & Beam can help you complete your dream.
SpencerWorks™	Designed and manufactured by SpencerWorks™ in our home town, Lincoln, Nebraska, the All-Season Hanging Window combines old-world craftsmanship with the concealed convenience of a modern storm window. Restore the authentic look and beauty of your home without sacrificing functionality.
Lancaster Conservatories™	Lancaster Conservatories offers do-it-yourself or professionally installed wood and glass, historically accurate conservatories, sunrooms, and greenhouses for about the same price as those rickity aluminum monstrosities that disfigure many backyard landscapes. Many Conservatory and Sunroom Pictures, plans, and designs are available throughout this site. Almost any design can be built in kit form, complete with plans and instructions, for installation by your local contractor.
Thomas Strangeland, Artist Craftsman	Tom Stangeland and his small group of craftsmen have been building award-winning fine furniture in the Arts & Crafts tradition for the past 25 years. Inspired by Greene & Greene, the furniture is built from the finest materials with impeccable craftsmanship. Everything is built by hand in Seattle , WA.