As someone who has purchased ready to assemble cabinets (RTA) online, I was pleased to find a local company offering a nice product. Many people in Buffalo and Erie County are familiar with Grossman’s Bargain Outlets. They offer closeouts, factory surplus and other discount home merchandise. A friend mentioned that they offer RTA cabinets. I don’t think that they offered much beyond a very inexpensive grade oak cabinet in the past. Now they offer Oak, Maple, and Melamine (white). The quality is as you would find from a lot of the RTA cabinet suppliers online, however, having a local store where you can pick your cabinets up the day that you need them is worth the slightly higher price. See my earlier post about RTA kitchen cabinets.

The cabinets that they offer are decent quality. The cabinet boxes are constructed using plywood sides. In my opinion, this is a must for an RTA cabinet. If you wanted to, you could add a little construction adhesive (or glue) during assembly and have a cabinet that will be rock solid for years. The maple cabinets have a unique edge detail on the doors. This gives more of a custom look, without having the custom price. Add a little bit of crown molding and you will be shocked at how good RTA cabinets can look.

If you will be adding crown molding, or a molding detail to the underside, you should consider going to a custom millwork shop such as Quaker Millwork in Orchard Park. You will probably end up paying less for your material than you would at a store like Home Depot or Lowe’s. The quality of the lumber is probably a bit higher as well. If you have cabinetry that has a stain, you should consider staining your trim slightly darker than the cabinet. This really makes the trim work stand out.

Good luck. Here is a copy of the price list for the Maple cabinets.

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I watch the real estate listings in Lancaster on a regular basis and noticed this townhouse that just came up. These are the townhomes off of William Street near Transit Road in Lancaster. I am mentioning this for anyone who is searching for a Condo/Townhome in the area. The listing is for $138,900 and just came up within the past week. Maybe it is one of the smaller units in the development, but I usually see new listings in that community list for around $155,000-$165,000.

Lancaster Townhouse for Sale

Keep in mind, this is very close to the intersection where Wal-Mart is going to build. Some people will see that as a positive, where many will consider it a negative. To each his own.

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After seeing some of the incredible playhouses at the Barbara Butler site and going over the free playhouse plans that are posted on this site, I decided to build a cool playhouse for my son.

The project is about 80% complete and I wanted to post a picture to document the progress.

I built the skeleton of the structure in my garage. This gave me the opportunity to work on the clubhouse when the weather was less than cooperative. I followed the basic concept that is outlined in our free plan, but built the structure as a panelized unit. Each wall section is a separate unit that is bolted to the others. This makes it possible for one person to build the entire playhouse. After the basic framing was complete I took the walls down and sheathed them with 1″ x 6″ T&G (tongue and groove) pine. Everything is going to be painted so the pine will be protected from the elements.

Doing everything alone isn’t the most ideal method, and also not the safest, but it is possible. I had help from my brother in law and father in law when bringing the wall panels out to the site and assembling the walls on the foundation. My son loves the fact that his uncle and grandfather helped build his new playhouse.

The windows were purchased at 84 Lumber. I had a bit of a hard time locating what I wanted (at the right price) and happened to come across these ‘shed windows‘ or ‘garage windows‘ for about $33.00 each. This playhouse will double as a storage shed during the winter, so making sure it is weather tight is a priority.

We were going to do something creative with the roof material, but instead decided to use a simple shingle to match our house. It is a 30 year architectural shingle. We could have gone with a cheaper shingle, but we only spent about $10 more to use an architectural shingle and it was a match with our house.

There will be a front porch added to the structure using salvaged lumber from a past play structure (a bus). The wood will also make up the railing and the bridge that leads out to the building.

I will post an update once the project is complete.

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To anyone who is reading this, I encourage you to read the comments at the bottom of this page. I did not have a bad experience, as outlined, but there are clearly many others who have. I encourage you to read the comments below and make your own judgement.

BML contracting is a local company who is based in Lancaster, NY. The company does work all over Western New York and Erie County.

I used the company to replace a roof, fascia and soffit on a rental property. I had gotten 2 other quotes on the property. One quote was from Big G Roofing (also in Lancaster, NY) and the other was from Sahlems Roofing & Siding (located in West Seneca, NY). Big G and Sahlems had estimates that came in at the same price. The estimates were for $4200.

I didn’t originally call BML to offer a quote, he happened to be driving by and saw that the roof needed to be replaced. He saw my tenant outside and contacted me to offer an estimate. Great timing and I love the fact that a contractor is out there trying to drum up business. Many contractors can’t find the time to call you back, much less stop by when they know you need some work done.

I am going to make an effort to write reviews that cover certain areas. I will address the following (in no particular order of importance).

• Price: BML came in with a very fair price. In fact, the owner, made it clear he wanted the work and asked where he needed to be in order to win the job. The price was about 10% below where his competition was. I was lucky that I knew someone who knows the owner of the company so a reference was easy for me to find.
• Communication: The communication with BML Contracting was great. The owner, Brian, is easy to get in touch with and calls right back after I leave a message for him. If you have dealt with contractors before, you will understand that this isn’t always the case.
• Schedule: I was lucky to have a relatively small job (2 - 1/2 days). Because of this, BML was able to get me on the schedule within a week.
• Quality of Work: The quality of work was as I expected. This was a roofing job that only had 1 layer of shingles on. Some companies wanted to go right over the top of this layer. BML went ahead and did a tear off of the existing roofing. They made some things right that weren’t done by the original builder (drip edge on the eaves).
• Follow-Up: Brian made sure to check back to be sure that I was happy with the job and even stopped by to see if there were any problems.
• Make Good: With most jobs, things aren’t going to be perfect. In my case, there was a little bit of trim that wasn’t lapped properly and Brian had one of his guys come back to be sure this was corrected.

Overall I had a very good experience with BML Contracting. I would use them again and I have already recommended them to a friend. I was very happy with the communication, price, and quality of work.

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A good friend of mine is selling a home in Orchard Park. It is a nice older farm house with about three acres of property. If you are looking for a country feeling that is still close to everything, this property might be right for you. The details can be found at www.wnysale.com.

The current owners are a senior couple who don’t want to the upkeep of such a large piece of property. It is clear that the home has been well cared for and has had numerous updates.

Take a look for yourself. The address is 5834 Cole Road, Orchard Park, NY. The asking price is currently $225,000 - $250,000 and I know that the owner is open to hearing any offer.

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If you are like me, you like hearing what other people think when purchasing a product. I don’t usually buy anything without looking for reviews of the item at a site like Amazon.com.

When it comes to local contractors, it can be very difficult to find a review. My wife and I recently had a patio installed by Broad Spectrum Concrete of West Seneca, NY. We received quotes from 2 other concrete companies in town and decided to go with Broad Spectrum Concrete since our neighbor had a great experience with them and another friend was pleased with their work.

Let me point out the one slight negative right away. It took about 6 weeks from the time we contracted until the time they did the patio installation. However, there were quite a few rainy days in there that put most contractors behind on their schedule. We expected this and weren’t too concerned, especially since there was nothing that we could do to speed things up.

Broad Spectrum called us 2 days before they planned to begin. This was plenty of time since we had been expecting them to call. They let us know that the crew would start at 7am and the job would take a few of days. The primary part of the job only took half of a day and then they had to return to wash things down and seal the concrete.

The crew showed up at 6:55am, just as promised. They were courteous and professional. The project lead was a nice guy (Mike) who really had control of his crew and got them to work immediately. He didn’t want to mess up our lawn with a Bobcat (a surprise) so he had the crew dig things by hand. After about 30 minutes of prep work, Mike reviewed the plan with us and then reviewed everything with the crew. They were all on the same page and got right to work. There were 7 men in all and they were all business. We have a 3 year old son (almost 4) who was watching every step of the way and the crew was very conscious of that. We didn’t hear any foul language when he was around (much appreciated). In fact, Mike called my son over to use the power tamper for a few minutes. That was a thrill that I am sure he will remember.

The company let us know exactly when they were going to come back to wash things down and when they would return to seal the patio and they showed up exactly as promised.

Summary: Broad Spectrum Concrete was fair, professional and easy to work with. They did an excellent job and we are very happy with the results. I would recommend them to anyone in need of Concrete work in the Buffalo Area.

You can reach Broad Spectrum at:
BROAD SPECTRUM CON SPECIALISTS
Broad Spectrum Concrete Specialists
115 South Ave, West Seneca, NY 14224
Phone: 716-675-5800
Web: http://www.broadspectrumconcrete.com/

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