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Worst experience of my life. Do not trust Ronny Levy
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I built an addition to my home 2 years ago and it has been a disaster almost from day 1. I was referred by a good friend to Ronny Levy, who owns Studio by Design, and was told he was a fair, efficient and no nonsense architect. His prices were on the higher end but good recommendations trump price sometimes. I interviewed him at my house and asked for feedback about my ideas but also to see what his vision for my home was. He literally had 1 thing to say. At the time I assumed he was being polite, but what I realized was that he did not really care very much and it later showed in his work.
After signing the contract, we were delegated to one of his runners. During the planning stages, I would get 1 line email responses to questions and never a face to face. Because of his poor communication with us and his own employees, it took an extra month for the permits to be pulled. This was very concerning because at the time my family of 3 with an infant we were living with my mother, which is a whole other story.
As the permits were pulled, one of Ronny's runners asked me if I wanted to survey my property. Knowing nothing about building a house, I asked Ronny if it was necessary. His runner said he recommended doing it but Ronny, responding 1 week later by email, said he didn't think it mattered. After our first inspection of the foundation, the inspector asked specifically for the survey. He wouldn't sign off until the property was surveyed and said that we might have to redo the foundation if it encroached the property line! He also showed me the architectural plans that Studio by design drew up and showed me that part of the roof line was not with code and if we extended out the way we wanted, we would be denied approval.
Basically, after having to redraw the plans, losing 200 sq feet and pushing us back 1 month, Ronny decided that he would finally come by the house to see how the project was doing. My friend that introduced us came as well. Well, Ronny had the audacity to say that he was going to charge us for the changes to the plan! He expected my wife and myself to pay for his mistakes! After some heated words and with the mediation of our mutual friend, Ronny agreed to make the changes under our original contract terms.
After that day, I did not speak again with Ronny the architect, and honestly, would not have written this review until what happened the other day. Our house has been fine over the last 2 years but 1 room from the addition gets hotter than the others. Our original AC is not powerful enough to get a strong current into that room so we had our contractor come and see what he could do. He looked in the room, then tried to access the attic from our 1 entry space. The contractor came down and said that the room's attic space is not accessible due to the roofline and no other access. He looked at the original plans and could not believe that the architect did not provide an access point to the new part of the addition!
So now we need to move all of our 4 month old's (new addition to our family ;) stuff out of the room so that he can cut a hole in the ceiling to access the attic. This was the last straw, and thus my 1 star review. If there was zero or negative stars, well...you know the story, I would highly NOT NOT NOT recommend Ronny, studio by design or anyone else at the awful company.
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