As most of you know, my home renovation with a company called Home Polish has not gone well. I didn’t write about it for months, hoping that somebody at Home Polish would own up to the mistakes and make it right. I have finally realized that isn’t going to happen and so, it’s time to reveal the work done on my home.
I’ve been working for the last week on a post telling the full story, but I’m struggling, because it’s hard to eloquently explain seven months of hell. Then the other night, I thought— you know what? The pictures speak for themselves. Maybe I just post those first.
I put pics on my Instagram story, and for those who didn’t see it, I will post the full story here as well:
There you go. My apartment renovation reveal as promised! If you want to follow me on Instagram, go follow @mommyshorts. You can see how Home Polish represents themselves on Instagram here.
Just a note that some of the pics above are finished work from Home Polish (like the mermaid tile and the bookshelf) and some are in-progress (like the wires behind the television and the unpainted ceiling in the chevron bathroom). The chevron bathroom pictures were taken a few months ago. We already ripped it out and are almost finished redoing it on our own dime with a new contractor separate from Home Polish.
Please sue them. This work is absolutely appalling… I’m sorry your going through this.
Agreed – they need to be taken to court and made to pay for everything you have to fix!
Oh, wow. Parenting, work, and life are hard enough on a minute-by-minute basis–to have the stress of all the botching on so many levels by them is just mind-blowing. 🙁 My heart goes out to you! Thank you for sharing this, and for helping others avoid them.
I would fully hulk out. You have such beautiful taste and they just butchered everything.
I would definitely think you have a case. I’m so sorry. This is horrific. We are about to embark on our own reno, so thank you for opening my eyes.
Did they have someone’s teenager do the tiling?! OMG. I’m sorry because this must be soooo upsetting for you, but I CANNOT stop laughing at the slanted chevron wall…. like, it takes more work to figure out the mystery angle to cut each piece at than it does to go back and do it correctly. This is one of the most black & white terrible jobs I’ve ever seen, and their CEO realllllly sucks if he doesn’t even want to do the bare minimum to make it up to you. I hope your new contractors get everything sorted for you guys, what a mess!!
Go get ’em! I can’t wait to see if there is any follow up. And that double tile in the chevron is the funniest/worst thing I’ve ever seen!
Dude, your followers are ALL OVER their Instagram! Good work! I hate this crap, we’ve had SO many issues with home remodels ourselves and the fact that this kind of thing happens all the time is ridiculous. Glad you went public with it.
Oh this is just so horrible. That is your HOME! You trust people when your hire them for this sort of project and how anyone could think this is acceptable is just beyond me. The double chevron and slanted wall just baffles me – how could a professional look at that and think that is passable work?!? I am so sorry you have had such a nightmare and they don’t even seem to care. Even when a job like this goes to plan it is incredibly stressful having contractors in your personal space for months on end and to have them do this is just so devastating – but to have them not offer any recompense or apology is despicable.
This is heartbreaking!!! It’s like a first time diyer was thrown in and knew nothing and tried to copy pic. Terrible. I messaged accounts I follow on IG that follow this company to spread the word!
I have owned 2 homes and have dealt with old/new bathrooms & renovations. I live in Lawrence, not far from you…I HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH BAD WORK! I actually laughed, im sorry, but this is beyond horrific. I would hire a lawyer. Im a very “forgiving” person who doesn’t like to make big waves, but this is undoubtedly the worst “reno” I have ever seen. Yes, one or two small mistakes are to ne expected, which is why I always check on work daily, etc, but this is so BEYOND…….XOXO
Reading some above comments…You guys could of done a better job literally on your own with your bare hands!
I cannot believe how badly they butchered this! I think I could lay tile better than that. I’m so sorry this happened. I hope you can sue them and recoup your money and put them out of business. What a stressful nightmare.
This is something you should take to the state attorney general’s office. This is fraudulent business practices. It’s astonishing to me that they’d dare mess with someone with such a wide audience too. Best of luck to you as you deal with it. I know it’s not fun.
The minutes I saw that “chevron” tile I wanted to cry. I cannot even imagine walking in to your home, knowing full well the type of investment you’re making and finding the whackass mess.
It’s literally like one of those “these photos will give you anxiety” compilations on buzzfeed or reddit. If this happened to me, at one point I would have conspired it to be a deliberate attempt. I cannot imagine a series of incompetencies like these being random.
So sorry to see this happened to you. It is not right how this company treated you. Leave a review on their BBB page. They are not accredited. They only have one review from this past December and it is a bad one. Hopefully this will save others from going through the same bad experience.
https://www.bbb.org/us/ny/new-york/profile/interior-designer/homepolish-inc-0121-177421
Ooh yes good point- the BBB can be very effective at getting companies to shape up (not sure if they will get involved if they’re not accredited but worth trying)
To anyone else contemplating a construction project: Do not cut corners – HIRE A LICENSED ARCHITECT.
Sue them.
HO.LEE.SHIT. It is so much worse than I anticipated. Sue the hell out of that company. I’m floored.
I was wondering why you hadn’t mentioned anything about the apartment…is it really taking that long? had I missed it🤔 This is so bad! I am so sorry you are going through this. I am glad you are posting about it to let others know. I know this was probably hard for you to go through and even harder to write about. Being critical of someone is not your style and I have extreme respect for you because of that. That’s why you posting this had way more impact than someone else doing so. You have a legion of mommys who will spread the word. Hang in there😍 I’m very glad you had other options of places to stay. Even though there is no place like home, whatever state of caos that happens to be in!
Holy crap on a cracker. I mean Ilana how have you and Mike not needed bail money? This is beyond the pale.
Omg! I’m getting anxiety just looking at these!
If you put this on a cc I’d so dispute the charges. Otherwise, sue them.
I’m so blessed I that I’ve found the most amazing contractor! I would murder them at this point if I were you, and NO jury would convict, remember it has to be all 12 jurors.
For a company that seems to be Instagram-savvy, their founder is either short-sighted or not so bright to think taking your experience so lightly won’t come back and bite him. He and his company shouldn’t do this to ANYONE, but with your platform and reach this was a really dumb move on his part from a marketing perspective. Guess he’ll get what he deserves with a loss of business (and hopefully some legal action from y’all).
So sorry to see this and that y’all have been dealing with this garbage reno job!
I am late to this story so excuse me if I am asking questions you already answered. Who was the architect and designer you worked with? Or was it a Homepolish team? Who was the construction project manager? It pains me to see your renovation photos!
My company works with Homepolish as one of their designers. Our experience with HP is they are pretty hands off once they take their large commission from our design fee. After that, we are pretty much deal solely our clients and would never let work like that happen. If our clients were not happy, we would quickly fix it. HP usually does not involve themselves in the process, even though they are suppose to ‘check in’ with the client thru-out the progress of the project. They put any responsibility and liability squarely on the shoulders on the designers.
My company works with HP because it is a great way to connect with interested clients and projects we would never have known about, very much like how TaskRabbit connects workers to clients. HP has the social media game down and their reach is wide, larger than my company could ever hope to gather, even though we have been designing for over 10 years. We have met some wonderful clients.
I am sorry to read and see of your crappy home renovation/design experience with HP. I agree that HP needs to figure out how to fix the errors. But I also want everyone to know there are many very TALENTED and ETHICAL designers that work through HP. Renovations and design is a long, expensive, complicated and detailed process and best done with professionals. Research your designers, beyond pretty pictures on their pages. look over their portfolio. Talk to their past clients. Experienced and professional designers make the process go as smoothly as possible when there are thousands of moving parts.
Mate, there is no way in HELL I would ever be working with @HomePolish after seeing this. There may well be good people on team, but I would not risk it. You may be better off considering taking your team somewhere else
We have our own ID firm so most of our work thru this way. HP is used only as a connector. We don’t work under their umbrella. I think most people assume (and HP markets it this way) that the designers are on their payroll. Actually it is more of a sub-contractor relationship. Either way, HP needs to stand behind who they recommend to do the work. Based on the work shown here, it looks like it was thru HP’s Build service with little over-site or project management. Bad all around.
Definitely use your contacts to get this debacle featured on the news. Give Home Polish a very public shaming! There was some news channel where the reporter would go after companies to get $$, answers, etc. I forget the channel but I thing the segment was called Omnibus?? GOOD LUCK!
[…] I’ve been using exclusively to edit all of my photos (HIGHLY recommend!) :: A great example as to why you should work with a *licensed* interior designer (this poor woman!) :: […]
They did a desk for me. The desk doors won’t open…I’ve moved on. I can confirm that they do post images of work that isn’t by their own designers.
you do know that homepolish doesnt actually do the work… the hired a shitty desk builder
HORRIBLE COMPANY! Everyone beware. Do not use this company!!!
Remodeling your home is stressful itself but having to deal with an unreputable company makes it 100x worse. I had a similar experience with them this year. The designer they paired me with LEFT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PROJECT and took a job on the other side of the country. This left me with zero design support for the contractors working on my project (contractors that the designer sourced). The custom built in shelving was so horribly miss measured – total fault of the designer who apparently couldn’t measure a straight line correctly- that they had to be ripped out and done again from scratch. in fact, everything the designer measured was incorrect. Homepolish offered little to no support with the missteps although they claimed to have “account management support” throughout the process. Even the account manager who was supposed to be on my project quit and I was assigned a new one who clearly had no idea how to provide proper customer support. Emails I sent would go unanswered for weeks. After about FOUR MONTHS of battling with them, and not so idle threats about suing (note, if you’ve got an issue with something they’ve done, TIMESTAMP and document everything you’ve been communicating via text, emails, calls, in-person meetings- it shows that you’re serious about your complaints), I finally got a partial refund which I used to pay the contractor directly to redo the shelving.
This company is a sham and one is better off using ANY OTHER design service.
Honestly, this is company that does things on the cheap, this is their business model. It has admittedly gone awry here (there are really only 2 things in your pictures that’s really an issue and not easily fixable, some of your issues were your responsibility to discuss and look at with designer like the teal vs. white shelves ).
But you get what you pay for. You didn’t hire a real designer or real contractor (and got what you paid for!). I understand that you are upset with them. But it also looks a whole lot like you’re using this episode to create drama and attention and followers and media for yourself. You’re really starting to look as much of a hack as they are.
My commercial interior design startup Uneebo is already recruiting and working with the poor designers who were laid off in Home Polish’s collapse. They are great people and I am looking forward to working with them and learning from the mistakes made at Home Polish to give customers a better experience.
[…] January 31, Ilana Wiles, who runs a popular blog called Mommy Shorts, posted about a botched Homepolish renovation of her Manhattan condo. She included more than two dozen photos of the renovation — wonky […]
sure homepolish sucked at their job but my oh m how ugly is that TV built in?! The TV is much too high and there’s no reason it should be framed like that
WOW! And just think I really wanted to work here at one point. Thanks for sharing this reality!