Am i being too picky!!!! Comments

joenic

Hi all
I feel like im moaning. Everytime i have work done i feel unhappy about something. We are having a kitchen fitted. The type of units we are having are block beech carcases Cream painted end panels and Cream painted doors (wooden) set in a cream painted surround. I've noticed that the bottom (inside floor ) of the carcases are in line with the top edge of the door surround and so where they are slightly uneven its noticable. ( I would have expected the carcas to bottom to be slightly lower so that this doesnt show. also we are having an americal fridge freezer with the units built around and at each side of the F/F is an end panel and a cupboard at the top joins the two end panels. One panel is set slightly below the cupboard and one slightly above we are probably talking about a 2mm difference . The sparky has put the lights in the wrong cupboard and so we will have holes where we shouldnt in one cupboard and i've just noticed where one cupboard is damaged due to fitting under cabinet lighting. The fitter started a day late and hoped to finish in four days (it was almost a blank canvas anyway) but i wonder whether hes rushed the job!!!
Any advice welcome. I tried to add pictures but dont know how to!
Thanks

ukwoody

It is VERY hard to get a perfect kitchen. There are a number of reasons why. Floors run, wall not straight, corners out, and this happens quite a lot - units of different sizes that are supposed to be the same they can be 1 or 2 mm different and there's nothing you can do about it.
With the end panels, try as you might, sometimes you just cannot get them to align perfectly. When these are fitted, you clamp them to the carcass in what you hope is the dead correct position. But then you have to screw through from the inside. The first screw will sometimes just pull that panel 1mm or more away from where you want it. You then have the problem, of trying to get a screw not to fall back into the original hole. bearing in mind that you cannot clamp the panel too tightly for fear of damaging it.

I'm not trying to excuse poor fitting, but sometimes it really is a nightmare trying to get the kitchen right. Thats why many people say get a pro in. If we can't get it right, you certainly can't :-)
Wall units especially can be absolute pigs to get right due to poor fixing substrate and uneven walls.

The sparky should be liable for the wrong unit being drilled. That is human mistake.
You must also bear in mind. Once you have found a fault, you will look for more. That is human nature. because you want a really nice kitchen that has cost you a lot of money, you quite rightly expect it to be good - but to anyone else, it is probably absolutly perfect.
As a tradesman, many times (and EVERY other trades person will say the same) we look at a job we have done, and think *** that really isn't quite right, I'm not totally happy with that, because we know it's there. Then the customer walks in and says, "WOW, that is superb, thank you so much...". Because they havent seen the mistake and so are not looking for anything else. Does that make sense?

By all means try and get us some pics, poor fitting is no excuse, but please bear in mind the point I'm trying to make;-). I bet you neighbours won't see them and be envious...
woody

ukwoody

Just one thing more (sorry!) I am NOT for one moment in any way suggesting you have not paid good money for the fitting, so please dont take this nastily. Most people want a good job done for reasonable money. But sometimes you have to be prepared to say, hold on, I want The Best! - in which case you must firstly make that clear at the planning stage, and secondly be prepared to be charged for it. Time is money and it takes time to do it perfectly.
But as I said, dont think I'm being funny, I'm not.

Woody

joenic

ukwoody wrote: »

Just one thing more (sorry!) I am NOT for one moment in any way suggesting you have not paid good money for the fitting, so please dont take this nastily. Most people want a good job done for reasonable money. But sometimes you have to be prepared to say, hold on, I want The Best! - in which case you must firstly make that clear at the planning stage, and secondly be prepared to be charged for it. Time is money and it takes time to do it perfectly.
But as I said, dont think I'm being funny, I'm not.

Woody

Thanks for the comments - actually its MFI and a contracted fitter - so i do feel i have paid top whack. The fitter originally said two weeks but then starting a day later than planned wanted to be finished four days later. I feel like we are getting the short straw because he's behind shedule.

ukwoody

ummm. This is the problem when employing fitters contracted to companies like MFI. Unfortuently it is very often the case that people pay very very good money for very average fitting when doing this. Posting pictures would be a help in this instance.

woody

joenic

Hi Woody
Do you know how to upload pictures on to mse they are stored at the moment on computer but when i click link for upload image it asks for a url
http://
Cheers

bookduck

joenic, you are lucky. I've got one guy with 14 years experience and have all of your problems and the following problems:

damaged 4 doors: One went back to Ikea friday (bought that way-apparently). By fri eve two more had bad scratches, and the fourth he had started drilling in the handle holes in the wrong location (too far down/up).

Kitchen work surfaces 'n' shaped layout: the are not mitre scribed or but scribe. They are not even joined or held together by metal joints. They are literally covered in silicon that is smeared over surface. It does not even shine, literally smeared like butter on bread. Also where the back of the board touches the wall is also smeared with silicon, not even beaded.

Asked for them to seal edges (yacht varnish) before using silicon, they did not seal the edges. All of the cuts on the worktop were done with a handsaw. The wrong end was cut off leaving the perfect end butted to the wall. The other end which is person facing should need no laminate cover, now it pressed onto a white sheet as to hide the badly sawn edges and it is that uneven that the stick-on spare laminate would not adhere. The cut is also not a clean and has laminate ripped from the top corner of the sheet.

The bottom of the white supporting sheet is also rough looking as that too has been cut by a handsaw.

One unit is a 900cm square corner cabinet. I wanted a shelf and not the carousel, so bought a rectangular piece of wood for then to cut out a suare leaving it L-shaped, but the door i at the diagonals oly will fit 70cm, so I don't think that this will fit either and the will have to take the top off again.

On the other side, they did say they are not finished yet, But i'm fairly sure they can't fix the sawn stuff, and the silicon might just be for ?????

I told him I would take pictures and put it on a website ans see what other people in the trade say and he sounded a bit alarmed. Looks like we are going to sort something out tomorrow.

ukwoody

Bookduck, if it is as you have described, then there is no way this guy will have 14 years experience - unless inside for fraud!

This sounds like a case for legal redress to me.

The L shaped shelf though, to be fair, can be tricky and should have been mentioned at the very begginning to him so it could be planned in (if you hadn't already told him).

Just to clarify one point, the back edges of worktops are not usually covered in varnish (or anything else) except around sink cut outs. Some fitters do put a line of silicon along the back edge so it squashes against the wall (unseen) then put a bead along the top though.

That said, it sounds like a Cowboys work to me.
Would love(?) to see pictures!!!

Woody

rdpro

just an aside on image uploads - go to somewhere like imageshack.us and upload your chosen photo there, then it provides you with various 'forum link' URL's - try them all in this forum's URL popup box and 'preview' your post, some don't work with this forum's format.

bookduck

I've sorted it out with the builder. The people he placed there have been removed from the job and he has brought someone else in who is doing a very good job. Have to admit he seems to have gone out of his way to put things right.

Here are the old pictures with a bit of a write-up, so you know why us punters slag off some of the trades


kitchen top: Lovely silicon beading work, with a chip in the surface. The surface with the chip need not to be cut or worked on. the left hand side of the top joins another section of top (u-shaped surface).


Table top leg: Hand sawn??? and not even straight.


Kitchen top: butted onto leg (picture above), top is not cut straight, and they actually should have cut the wall end side and not the side shown. Because the top is not straight, they decided to butt the leg against the edge of the top. Notice the light shining through the joint. They also cut the top too short so it did not rest on the tiles correctly, showing the missing tiles.


Other half of the kitchen top, besides the obvious, the cut is not straight either and bows.



Kitchen top: Silicon beading, iincorporating the new free style spread effect.


Wall cupboard door: extra hole - should I one day get slightly larger door handles


Wall cupboard door: did not realize that the hinges were self grip, so screwed each one in with one screw which was a bit too long and caused the door face to develop a blister - 7 doors had this blister


Base cabinet doors: No the wost problem but 2 cabinets are side by side and each one has sloping doors like this. If it wasn't for this post, I would not have noticed.

pandora205

Blimey - I was thinking of getting a new kitchen. Now I've changed my mind!

No wonder you complained bookduck!