We were absolutely thrilled with the final work done by Kitchen & Bath and although there were some bumps along the way we would recommend them heartily to others. Here are the pros and cons of our experience.
Pros:
1. Best price: I shopped around a lot, and I believe that Kitchen & Bath offers the most competitive pricing I’ve seen. They operate on a massive scale and so they’re able to offer tighter margins and lower prices.
2. Outstanding craftsmanship: Ali, the project manager and lead carpenter, does exceptional work. The crown moulding he installed is gorgeous and his attention to detail is everywhere.
3. Customer service: Narges, the designer, was patient, friendly, and often went above and beyond to follow up our concerns and deal with anything that came up during the renovation.
4. Design process: There are 3 meetings involving an initial consultation, estimate meeting, and a meeting to select finishes, after which you’re provided with 3-D rendering of your finished project. Even though we thought we knew what we wanted we greatly benefitted from the design expertise of Ali and Narges. Thanks to them, we ended up removing our bulkhead, angling one of our cupboard ends, and adding a broom closet and we’re SO glad that we did.
5. Cabinet quality: The cabinets are solid wood exterior with plywood interior. They are built to last and look stunning
6. Project satisfaction: I made a long list of items I wanted addressed and Ali welcomed the feedback and worked to complete everything to perfection. Their commitment to ‘getting it right’ gave me a lot of peace-of-mind.
7. Friendly, service-oriented workers: All of the workers in Ali’s team – and there were many of them – were polite, friendly, and extremely pleasant to work with.
8. One-stop shop: I think that it’s a great advantage that Kitchen & Bath has all in-house contractors from demolition to tiling and electrical work.
Cons:
1. Understand the warranty: During the initial consultation, I was told by Hamid that there was a lifetime warranty. It wasn’t until after I signed that I learned that it’s a 1-year warrant for parts and labour, 5-year warrants for parts, and life-time warranty for hardware and fixtures. That’s still a decent warranty, but I would have liked to have had it explained properly up front.
2. Check your estimate carefully: You’re incentivized to sign the contract in the 2nd meeting before you’ve chosen all of your finishes or had more detailed measurements of your space. I suspect that almost everyone’s initial estimate is lower than the actual work. Some of the installation fees were left off the initial estimate and other details were discovered in the follow-up measurement phase. More significantly, however, the cabinet cost assumed a more dated style and it wasn’t until after we signed the contract that we learned that shaker cabinets (which we had talked about in the initial request) were extra. Everybody wants shaker cabinets these days so it’s hard to imagine that this would be an extra cost but either way that should be clarified in the initial consultation. It felt like this was deliberately avoided to make the estimate look cheaper than it really was.
3. Delays and disorganization: The work that we had done took place during the pandemic so that could explain part of the problem, but our project did face delays and we never knew when the workers were coming or if they weren’t, why. The renovation industry has been booming and it just felt like everyone was overworked and stretched too thin. That being said, they remained extremely pleasant and Narges came to our rescue time and again when we felt any frustration.