A little background to this story is that we purchased a new home built by Empire Communities. The kitchen cabinets were built and installed by Paris Kitchens. During the whole construction process we were faced with the standard builder grade components or upgraded components. Now this is something that everyone who is building a new home should understand. When you build a new house you first pick from a variety of floor plans / building models that all have a price attached to them. I would assume that people pick the biggest house they believe they can afford. The catch is that the price quoted is with builder grade everything which can mean pretty low quality. Then you get to go to your upgrade appointment where you are faced with literally thousands of low and high priced upgrades. For example, in our situation, the door from the house to the garage was considered an upgrade (don't get me started on this). This upgrade cost us an additional $1250. We went through all the possible upgrades and colour selections and when we came to the kitchen cabinets we had no choice but to accept the builder grade cabinets as the upgrades were just getting too much.
Now this gets to the heart of this post. We were in our house for less than 3 years before we noticed that the veneer on the kitchen cabinets was peeling off. We contacted Paris Kitchens and inquired about the warranty of the cabinets. We were informed that all kitchen cabinets come with a 1 year warranty. WHAT! One year, really this must be a joke. You are telling me that you build a kitchen in a new house and you can only warranty your product for a year. Not a good start. So we then asked what it would cost to replace the two doors that we were having problems with. They quoted us a price of $258.60 for the doors which we would need to install. So I ended up taking off the doors and I tried to glue the veneer back on to prevent it from peeling off. This solution held for several months and then doors started peeling again including other doors.
Now for full disclosure the first door we were having problems with was in the location where we normally use our toaster and the next door was close to the stove. I consider this standard kitchen use and I feel that a kitchen should be built to withstand this as a standard builder quality.
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| This the the first door I tried to glue | This is the door by the stove that now scratches every time you open it |
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| This is the bottom of the door above the microwave. |
This is the top of the door above the microwave. |
So now we are faced with what to do. We bought a new construction home to avoid these types of maintenance / repair issues and redoing a brand new kitchen in less than 4 years really wasn't in our plans.
So thank-you Empire Communities and Paris Kitchens for your excellent work in creating a home for us. I am sure glad it all held together for a year so you don't need to worry about it.
Thus ends the scathing review. I feel better now.
