Chief Wood Finishing

Max St Hilaire is/was owner, salesperson, and general contractor for Chief Wood Finishing. After receiving a kitchen cabinet refacing quote from Max in Feb 2022, my wife and I hired Max, which included a payment of 50% up front. After a little work was done, and claims that materials were in the shop, I paid Max another 25%. Max claimed he had a cabinet shop with equipment valued at over $1 million. We later found out that his was likely not true, as Max was subcontracting all work. Max was responsive to texts, phone calls, and emails immediately prior to receiving a payment. However after receiving payment, Max was extremely slow at responding to texts, phone calls, and emails, sometimes taking up to a week or more. Max made many commitments to have subcontractors do work on certain days, and almost all commitments were not kept. Subcontractors told us that Max did not pay them, and some were owed a lot of money. Max said he was going bankrupt, but verbaly agreed to pay us back what we paid him less the very little amount of work that was done. A day later his phone and email were out of service. Max never paid us back, and we had to hire another company to do almost all the work. Service Alberta said Max should have had a prepaid contractor license, but he did not.

We paid 50% in March and were scheduled for the kitchen renovation in April. It's July now and nothing has been done yet. Until June the owner had every kind of excuses like been sick, being in the hospital or suppliers being behind on the material delivery. After visiting the shop, which is rented from other company, we discovered that there are multiple customers who paid the deposit and never received any goods or services. Currently we cannot reach the owner by phone, email or any other sources of communication. Also, stay away from anybody who refers you to this company as they may be involved in this. Hopefully you will not make the same mistake as us and find more reliable company for your project.

Do not hire! Very unreliable and unprofessional workmanship!

Please do not hire this company. We gave a 50% deposit over 60 days ago because we thought this company was local, competent and could deliver the kitchen refresh we were looking for. Max St Hiliare the salesman and owner, has lied to us, about every aspect of the job. Currently, our house has an unusable kitchen and Max says he is going to show up to do work and never arrives. His excuses are sick, or at the hospital. Everything he says is a lie. I feel so deceived and foolish about hiring this company. I also got four quotes and checked out his previous jobs so I did my due diligence. It appalls me that companies like this still exist. Please learn from our mistake. Do not hire this company otherwise you will be horribly disappointed.

The most unreliable and untrustworthy trades people I have ever had the displeasure of working with. Took months to do a simple job but they sure demanded being paid at regular intervals. The owner only showed up once. Rest of the time it was shoddy work by terrible subcontractors who refused to wear masks indoors in the time of COVID and public health restrictions. Did not take off their dirty shoes. Nobody cleaned up after themselves. Save yourself the headache and go elsewhere.