About Hallie Home Improvement llc

Hallie Home Improvement llc is a remodeling company based at 50 Bross Pl in Irvington. We do kitchens and bathrooms in Essex and Union County, and we have been doing it for more than fourteen years.

That is the whole description. There is no origin story here about a passion for transforming spaces.

Why only two rooms

It would be easy to say yes to everything. Most small contractors in this area do, because a deck in June pays as well as a bathroom in June.

The problem is that a kitchen and a bathroom are the two hardest rooms in a house. They are where plumbing, electrical, waterproofing, tile and cabinetry all converge in a small space, usually in a building that predates modern versions of all five. The failure modes are specific and expensive: a shower pan that was never pre-sloped, a cabinet run installed level to a floor that slopes, a range hood ducted into an attic, electrical serving a modern kitchen on circuits sized in 1955.

Doing the same two rooms repeatedly is how you stop being surprised by those things. We know what is usually behind the tile in a 1930s bathroom on Springfield Avenue. We know that a Newark two-family often has a cast-iron stack that is not moving. We know which alcove sizes are standard in a postwar Union ranch, and that a 1920s Montclair colonial will not have a square corner in the room.

That is the entire argument for specialization. Fewer surprises, and honest answers earlier.

How we work

The first call is a conversation. What is there now, what bothers you, what you want instead, roughly when. Often we can tell you on the phone whether the thing you are imagining is straightforward, complicated or not possible, which saves everybody a site visit.

We tell you what we find. Demolition in an older house turns things up. Rotted subfloor, wet framing, galvanized pipe closing in on itself. You hear about it the day we find it, with a plain description of the options and what each one costs. Nobody likes that conversation and everybody prefers it to the alternative.

We do not sell you a bigger job than you need. If your shower has failed but the rest of the bathroom is sound, we will rebuild the shower. If your cabinets are solid plywood boxes and the layout works, we will tell you refacing is a reasonable option even though new cabinets would be a larger invoice.

We will not do the work badly to hit a number. There are contractors who will tile over a failed pan or set tile on greenboard, and it will look fine for two years. If the budget does not support doing it properly, the honest answer is to do less of the room, not to do all of it wrong.

We stay close to home. The service area is nineteen towns because a crew that can be back at a job in twenty minutes is a crew that keeps a schedule.

What we are not

We are not a design-build firm with a showroom and an in-house architect. We are not a national franchise with a call center. We are not a general contractor who will quote your roof, your driveway and your basement in the same visit. A kitchen contractor and a bathroom contractor, and nothing beyond those two rooms.

We are also not the cheapest quote you will get. There is usually someone who will do it for less, and sometimes that person is fine. Often the gap is the waterproofing, the substrate preparation, or the permits.

On trust signals

You will notice this site does not claim a number of completed projects, a satisfaction percentage, an award, or a badge. That is deliberate. Those numbers are unverifiable on nearly every contractor website you will visit, including the ones that display them most prominently.

What we can put in front of you is a registration number you can check with the state, an address you can drive to, a phone number a person answers, and pages on this site detailed enough that you can judge for yourself whether we know the work. There are also reviews, which sit on Google where we cannot edit them.

Where we work

Nineteen towns across Essex and Union County: Irvington, Newark, East Orange, Orange, South Orange, Maplewood, Millburn, Short Hills, West Orange, Montclair, Bloomfield, Livingston, Hillside, Union, Springfield, Elizabeth, Summit, Cranford and Westfield.

Each has its own kitchen and bathroom page. See the full service area, or read about how a project runs from the first call to the final walkthrough.