We hired Design and Conquer to refinish our kitchen cabinets after meeting with Josie. Josie is very personable and sold us on their services speaking highly of their process and providing beautiful samples. Joe is also very friendly and began the work on our kitchen in February 2018. The process involves removing your cabinet doors and finishing them at their shop. Our doors were gone for almost 3 weeks and I was shocked at the state or the project when they were returned to our home. The issues on our doors included hairs and stickers being painted over, fibers under the coats of paint on the majority of the doors, and spots that look to have been missed with the initial coat all together. Our cabinets were also re-hung crooked and the handles were mostly loose. All required tightening or correction. We were shocked that a business would return cabinets to our home in the state they were in. It appeared that very little care was given at their shop to adequately clean and prepare the cabinets for painting, and the work space must have been unclean. I immediately contacted Josie with our concerns and was advised that it was best to wait 2 weeks to allow the paint to cure and that there was always a follow-up visit scheduled to address any issues. After the two weeks, we had additional complaints, and there were spots already chipping. Joe returned to address the spots and although he did fix some areas, the fixes were a fraction of the actual concerns. Again, he left us with a product in a totally unacceptable state. I will be clear that this is not "nit-picking" about the work as you will see from the pictures below. This was simply unacceptable work. Joe returned a third time after meeting with me to address the entire job and the exact details of our concerns. We were asked to flag the concerning areas and Joe returned to again correct the issues. After this 3rd visit, my kitchen was left in a terrible state. No care had been taken to cover my cupboards, floors or move my kitchen rug. There were paint splatters everywhere. And the actual job was still in an unacceptable and unprofessional state. After this third attempt to fix the issues, I opted to no longer allow Design and Conquer access to my home. I do not feel that there is a skill level there to correct the issues that they have created. I will be very clear that we followed the instructions given to us by Joe and Josie at every step. We stayed in constant communication with them and gave them the benefit of the doubt until our patience was pushed to the limits. We were given a refund of approximately 25 % of the cost of the job as compensation for our dissatisfaction with the job (which Josie has clearly advised voids any warranty on the job). This experience has been stressful and heartbreaking for us. This is a project we saved to be able to complete and we are left with a finish that looks like we did it ourselves. I truly hope no one else has to go through this experience. ADDITION: in response to company's "excuses", please take a look at the photo's I attached and decide whether this is a case of problems with wood absorbtion. Who on earth trusts a company to continue to do work in their home after repeated disappointments, flawed workmanship and terrible treatment/respect of my home.?
- Approximate cost of services:
- $2,700.00
- Company Response
Each kitchen requires varying levels of follow up- in this case the wood associated with the cabinets continued to absorb after each visit- and needed further attention. While we always communicated with our clients, we were put in a very difficult stressful situation when a client no longer wants us to return-our hands are tied- judgement on the prep and environment in which the cupboards are completed is false in this review. With regards to the warranty, I cannot uphold a warranty when a client clearly communicates that he/she us has involved another business that completes similar work to ours. We are committed to any number of visits that a kitchen requires as long as we have client cooperation- the client was refunded a portion of the project to compensate for the fact that the kitchen still required work and we were empathetic to the fact that the clients were unhappy. But again we were not permitted to continue- we do generalize that kitchens on average are completed in 3 weeks with a touch up visit however please note there are kitchens that require more time and effort depending on the existing cupboards we are presented with-