New Kitchen Counters - a Warning!

Suggestion and rant time!

We built our beautiful Ikea kitchen, and got a quote from them on both laminate, quartz and granite options. We wanted to do the best we could for resale value without breaking the bank. The Ikea quote for laminate was good, but the other options were way overblown. We started research on independent options. We shopped around, went to showrooms, and eventually settled on one place that was recommended by a family friend. They had the best quote for quartz by a mile, and promised to install everything in our time frame. We borrowed some samples and finally chose a really pretty grey with sparkly flecks (man-made, not natural).

Cue the problems. 

1. When I went in to book and pay for the countertops, I found the sample I was holding on a different rack for the next price bracket lower. I brought it over to the lady and she stumbled over herself before eventually agreeing it was the same piece, and she’d honour the cheaper price for me. She reeked of marijuana, and I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could… I paid a half deposit and felt pretty proud of myself for savings us some more money by doing a quick look around the showroom. We would have nice counters installed for $2220.
2. They came one day and measured everything. Promised to cut out and seal in the sink too, and when they were done on install day we would be thrilled. No red flags yet.
3. They were late on the day of install, and it was one guy and a friend who both didn’t look strong enough to lift granite. We had my parents come over for backup and basically tried to stay out of their way for the few hours. When they were finished, they tried to head out as fast as possible. We then noticed a major issue – we had different colour counters! Apparently they differed from batch to batch, and as we had a join line, it was very pronounced. We also found another smaller counter piece was also the different shade. More than half of our kitchen was the “wrong” colour. We had not been told about these variances, especially because you can be super-accurate with man-made quartz.
   
   
   
   
   
   

We showed them. The one guy kept saying “No it’s just a shadow”.. We were getting angrier. Eventually he agreed they were different colours and told me to call the office the next day to schedule a replacement.

4. Then when I called, they said they would replace the largest piece which was the actual wrong colour, which happened to be the piece the sink was now glued into. We didn’t want to risk damage to the sink and replace that large piece, but they were not offering any other solutions.
5. I called every day for a week.. eventually I got a hold of the lady who said they had roof leaks which caused the communication delay. Then another excuse, then another. She didn’t want to put anything in writing at first, so eventually I resorted to only emailing to try and protect myself.
6. At the end of the day, they offered me a discount of $665 to leave it as is, and I said no.. come back and replace it then. She emailed saying “what would you like to pay”. We settled on $1243 total, and we just have to have placemats over the join area.

So, what have we learned?

My husband jokes – “How to save money on countertops: Have them screw it up”, but it’s hard to tell whether a company will be good or not to work with in the beginning. I did the research and they did have good reviews, plus our family friend had used them in the past. And it’s hard to judge whether a company will have a lack of professionalism until you’re in deep with them, but my first meeting with weed-lady should have been a clue. They did a lovely job of the cuts and corners though, and the slab pieces are really pretty. 50/50 quality/experience. 

All I can suggest is to have multiple meetings with a company before signing on the dotted line, and to even try to price match a good quote with a place you don’t get the heebie-jeebies from. In hindsight, I should have taken the borrowed sample piece we liked to different companies (along with the quote) and see what they had comparable. I think if we had pushed a little harder at other places, we could have gotten what we needed there.