Hi there Cabbie - Welcome to the forums here and thanks for responding. Your response is really worthwhile.
This is precisely the reason that I started up this Long Beach message board. Long Beach is both a big town and a small town at the same time. Like you point out, word usually gets out pretty easily and quickly on local matters, local businesses, etc. However, with a message board like this, it will hopefully facilitate sharing more info so that the next person might perhaps benefit from us sharing our experience - at least they might be able to make a more informed decision. For example, when I first did not hear back from Camille right away, I figured that it was due to the holiday season, etc. People had other priorities, so I basically allowed quite a lot of time to pass by. I'm a particularly forgiving and understanding person - she had otherwise made a fairly good initial impression on me, although I should have seen the handwriting when she showed up at my house a couple hours late and without any tile samples as she and I had discussed.
The sad part of it is that I think that she appears to be very good at what she does - I believe that it is only the business itself which is run so poorly and is ultimately the owner's responsibility. Nonetheless, they are useless to me regardless of the cause.
I too always try to support local business first when it makes sense. I have so far found them to be surprisingly competitive in pricing, so I do not think you got ripped off
I'm not sold on jumping on the Home Depot bandwagon yet for the countertop - I'm not even certain if they offer the same selection of mica tops. I'm also not sure if they offer Mica over plywood, versus over "flakeboard."
In any event, I think it's worth noting that from what I understand, Centre Cabinet has no association with Centre Millwork. In fact, I have ordered several building supply items (doors, durarock, etc.) from Centre Millwork and I've found them to be extremely easy to deal with and very efficient. They will deliver just about any stocked item next-day for free and with custom items (doors) that are being ordered, they get them in the next day and deliver them free the day after that. They've been perfectly reliable and have even accommodated taking back some materials that were special ordered for an alternate version of the product. That's great service.
Unfortunately, people may associate the two companies because they share the same building and have similar business names. I was considering discussing this with the owner of Centre Millwork since I'm certain they would not want to tarnish their name.
Regarding your tile-guy recommendation, my best guess is that she recommended "Marty" - that's who she recommended to me, but I was not impressed with him after he came by and tried to sell me some other jobs I had no interest in - particularly, he wanted to do plumbing work for me, but he did not seem very savvy in plumbing from our brief discussion. I didn't ask him about plumbing work. Ultimately, his quote was not competitive - it was a bit more than the other three quotes I'd gotten.
Of the other three quotes, I have seen the work of one individual and was very impressed with it - so I can perhaps give you a second-hand referral based upon that if you still are looking for somebody.
Incidentally, I hope you will register on the message board so that you can more easily participate. For example, if you register, you would receive an automatic notification of any replies to this topic such as my reply here
In addition, I have lots of future plans for expanding the website, though I've gotta focus on finishing the work on my house first
Again, thanks for the great input and I hope you'll share all the gory details of how things work out.
In the future, I'll being adding a photo gallery so that you can even post photos of your finished product if you wish. I hope to do that sooner rather than later
Mike