The warranty

The Second Winter Warranty

Every remodel in Wisconsin gets tested by something no contractor controls: the first winter. Wood moves, foundations breathe, and the little gaps show up in February. Most warranties expire before the test ends. Ours is built around it.

Here is the problem with the standard one-year warranty: a kitchen finished in June has seen exactly half a winter when the warranty dies. The seasonal movement that opens a miter joint or racks a door does its work slowly, through a full freeze-thaw cycle, and it finishes the job about the time the paperwork says the builder is done caring.

So we wrote a different clock. Fourteen months after completion, we schedule a return visit — we call it the Second Winter visit — and repair anything the seasons moved: trim gaps, miter openings, cabinet doors out of alignment, drywall cracks at new-to-old seams, floors that squeaked their way into the conversation. It sits on top of our standard two-year workmanship warranty, and it is written into every contract, not offered as an upgrade.

The visit is not a favor; it is scheduled by us, tracked in our system, and published in our case studies — including what we found. Sometimes the answer is two hairline miters and an afternoon. Sometimes it is nothing at all. Either way, you get a house that has been through a Wisconsin winter and been made right afterward, and we get the only quality-control data that matters: what our work looks like a year later.