We decided to take a trip over to our closest Cabinets to Go showroom, excited to find an economical solution for our impending kitchen remodel. It's about 45 minutes from our house, so we made it a family outing / lunch out.
We'd already perused the catalog they'd sent in the mail. It looked really good!
When we entered, they had a really nice looking selection of cabinets set up along with wall displays of hardware, vanities and countertop samples. Still good...
.. until I looked up close. Sure, it's wood & plywood, but it did not have a good fit and finish. There were gaps in the trim I could see through. The shelf pins were plastic clips. A big surprise to me was that it was held together with knockdown hardware, plastic from what I could see. The painted door fronts were cracked at the seams (Which I know happens due to wood movement, but it looked rougher than I'd expect.)
Awww nuts. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is,...right? This stuff is IKEA-ish. It's probably slightly better, due to the solid wood,... I'll give it a rousingly solid rank of "decent-ish". Maybe it's even a good value for the dollars. But I can tell it won't last for the long run; I doubt the install would be pleasant.
We didn't stick around long. The lone salesperson was working with another couple, and never acknowledged our presence. Later, I looked at their website more closely. Although it had higher-end manufactures plastered across the homepage, we didn't see any of them. We had just seen the Chinese, assemble-it-yourself stuff. The fact that they are assemble-it-yourself is buried deep within the bowels of their website, under terms and conditions. Just read through those babies and decide if this is the type of outfit you want to work with on your beloved dream home. To me they say, very clearly, "RUN!!!" I couldn't find any reference to them being "ready-to-assemble" anywhere in their gorgeous, full-color 27 page catalog. It just feels intentionally tricky to leave such a detail hidden, or to bury it somewhere less than obvious. Scuzzy. I don't mind economy grade or doing assembly, but this marketing style is the old put lipstick on a pig routine.
I did a little follow-up surfing on the company. There appear to be plenty of happy customers, but just as many, or more, unhappy ones, really-really unhappy ones,.. downright pissed-off, plaster their complaints across the internet, everywhere they can find a text box ones. There are countless horror stories about poor customer service, shipping damage, missed delivery dates and endless replacement times. As I suspected, there are poor ratings from the Better Business Bureau. Enough to scare us off, even if we were still interested in the product.
Although we could save some serious coin, I just don't think it's in the cards for us. It's still a huge effort in time and money to settle for something of this quality. Maybe if we were flipping houses we'd think about it, but even then, I'd just buy in-stock from a big-box to avoid shipping issues and the risk of poor customer support.
I really wanted this to be a win. To good to be true.
We'd already perused the catalog they'd sent in the mail. It looked really good!
When we entered, they had a really nice looking selection of cabinets set up along with wall displays of hardware, vanities and countertop samples. Still good...
.. until I looked up close. Sure, it's wood & plywood, but it did not have a good fit and finish. There were gaps in the trim I could see through. The shelf pins were plastic clips. A big surprise to me was that it was held together with knockdown hardware, plastic from what I could see. The painted door fronts were cracked at the seams (Which I know happens due to wood movement, but it looked rougher than I'd expect.)
Plastered around the showroom were photocopied signs that the cabinets were "ready to assemble". Ok, wait,...what? I don't recall seeing that little detail anywhere in their flashy literature.
Awww nuts. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is,...right? This stuff is IKEA-ish. It's probably slightly better, due to the solid wood,... I'll give it a rousingly solid rank of "decent-ish". Maybe it's even a good value for the dollars. But I can tell it won't last for the long run; I doubt the install would be pleasant.
We didn't stick around long. The lone salesperson was working with another couple, and never acknowledged our presence. Later, I looked at their website more closely. Although it had higher-end manufactures plastered across the homepage, we didn't see any of them. We had just seen the Chinese, assemble-it-yourself stuff. The fact that they are assemble-it-yourself is buried deep within the bowels of their website, under terms and conditions. Just read through those babies and decide if this is the type of outfit you want to work with on your beloved dream home. To me they say, very clearly, "RUN!!!" I couldn't find any reference to them being "ready-to-assemble" anywhere in their gorgeous, full-color 27 page catalog. It just feels intentionally tricky to leave such a detail hidden, or to bury it somewhere less than obvious. Scuzzy. I don't mind economy grade or doing assembly, but this marketing style is the old put lipstick on a pig routine.
I did a little follow-up surfing on the company. There appear to be plenty of happy customers, but just as many, or more, unhappy ones, really-really unhappy ones,.. downright pissed-off, plaster their complaints across the internet, everywhere they can find a text box ones. There are countless horror stories about poor customer service, shipping damage, missed delivery dates and endless replacement times. As I suspected, there are poor ratings from the Better Business Bureau. Enough to scare us off, even if we were still interested in the product.
Although we could save some serious coin, I just don't think it's in the cards for us. It's still a huge effort in time and money to settle for something of this quality. Maybe if we were flipping houses we'd think about it, but even then, I'd just buy in-stock from a big-box to avoid shipping issues and the risk of poor customer support.
I really wanted this to be a win. To good to be true.