Rona Home & Garden

Rona (Nepean location) offers kitchen design, cabinetry, countertop and installation services. They also have good financing options and reasonable pricing, which are reasons why we chose Rona. They have a decent selection of cabinetry (though other places have more) and we are generally happy with our cabinets and their construction. The installation of the cabinetry is fairly good, but remember that this is not a custom job, and imperfections are part of the deal.

The major weakness of working with Rona is that they want to sell you a whole kitchen renovation, but really should stop at kitchen cabinets. The installer assigned to our job was ok for the cabinetry but there were problems with some of the other work. For example, when a plumber entered our house and saw the sink, he immediately noted that it would never pass inspection - it was not vented properly. How would we know? Rona salesperople suggested that the installer can do most of the whole renovation (with the exception of electrical) and that they will back it up with a one year guarantee. This was repeated over and over, but this is a sales pitch. Further, we have waited many months to have all of the cabinetry ordered and installed. Because cabinetry comes from Winnipeg, it can be damaged in shipping, and every time you order something it takes six+ weeks to arrive, especially cabinets with a custom stain. We started the project six months ago, and it is still not finished, yet was have paid the bill in its entirety. Most parts have now arrived and the job should be complete soon, but it has taken six months. That is an unacceptably long period, but again, it's what you need to expect. You will pay less, but you will also get less service and wait longer for problems to be resolved.

Other issues we ran into included rough and unsightly finishing of the cabinets at floor level requiring quarter round that of course, has to be special ordered, laziness regarding drywalling when the installer used wooden trim to hide that he had not finished drywalling a doorway we had widened (still waiting to have it finished). When we had the backsplash done (by a separate contractor) they noticed that the very heavy hood fan had been incorrectly installed with drywall nails instead of solid nails that will hold up the hood fan properly. The Rona installer also used our own home vaccum to clean up drywall dust and broke our machine, which we had to repair. He left quite a few scars in the newly installed hardwood floor due to carelessness, and very simply, did not perform to our expectations or the price we paid to have the work done. Overall, would only recommend for cabinets and stop there.

Should Rona make good on their promises, I will be happy to update this review.