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
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
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?
The Clogless 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???
We give our workers colorful, monogrammed coffee mugs....
... Just not ours.
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.
Which is why, around our very unfancy office, you will see stacks of beautiful, monogrammed coffee mugs — absolutely none of them 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.... Jim and Ron are guys I want to work with again.
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 wonderful. 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....
We 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 Honor Roll members of the Better Business Program 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 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 our cultural heritage — representing whole historical eras and a truly massive investment in energy and resources much too precious to be just cast away and replaced.
Coordinating with Heritage Architecture 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. Go to "Coordinating with Heritage Architecture".
We understand your love affair with your heritage house. It 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 sterile new McMansions and tract colonials, it has a legacy of character and charm. None of us can imagine living anywhere but in our own old houses, squeaky floors, sticky sashes and all, because with these little quirks come 100-year-old sycamores, lush, mature gardens and a Purple Martin house in the back yard dated "1929 - Fred".
Over many years we have become the experts at updating period homes while preserving the feel, style and craftsmanship of the 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 store twice as much in the same space, and of designing additions that look like they were a part of your house from the very beginning.
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
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.
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.
Design/Build Remodeling
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.
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.
Construction Management Fixtures by DuravitJust because your bathroom is small does not we cannot remake it into a functional, gracious and elegant room. Click here for more bathrooms.
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.
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 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, we at StarCraft invite you to discover how Sand Creek Post & Beam can help you complete your dream.
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.
At The Kennebec Company we design and build period inspired cabinetry for every room for homes all across America. Every project is custom designed to be in perfect harmony with the home and with the lives of those who live there. Cabinets are hand crafted using select grades of premium woods, traditional joinery and hand applied finishes, with meticulous attention to every detail.
We do not collect personal information on this web site. To find out about the information we do collect, please read our security and privacy disclosures. By accessing this web site, you agree to our Terms of Service.