CABINET RENOVATIONS BY EARL FAGAN

We hired this company in 2002. This company made many attempts to resolve our many concerns and for that we are grateful. However, we feel that this company never actually completed our cabinet job. In 2009, when the company went bankrupt, we were missing some of the doors, had many failed doors, had the incorrect style doors on some of the cabinets, and had some damaged doors near the hinges. In addition, the installed crown molding was starting to delaminate. We received vinyl coated Rigid Thermo Foil (RTF) doors. We were told that the vinyl doors were easier to keep clean than a wood door, that they never needed to be refinished, and that our investment was protected with a lifetime warranty. The cabinets would have a matching vinyl veneer on them. Everything looked great at first. When other contractors working at our house damaged some of the cabinet doors and drawer fronts and other material, this company paid to correct some of that damage. For that concession we are grateful. However, we also paid additional monies out of pocket to this company to replace some of the damaged doors and drawer fronts. At this company?s suggestion, we made sure that we ran the heating and air conditioning year round while this house was being remodeled to protect our investment in these cabinets. After the initial installation of the cabinets, the vinyl veneer started to come off the cabinets. One of the company?s employees helped me with that work for one full day, but unfortunately I spent many more days after that re-gluing the material onto the cabinets with contact cement. All this work required that I use a respirator. I asked their company if I could paint the lips of the cabinet door and drawer openings with oil paint. One of the company?s employees told me that I could do that successfully without harming what their company had provided. After I finished all of that stinky tedious work, the veneer again started to lift off the face frames of the cabinet boxes. I contacted the manufacturer of the vinyl refacing material and they told me that the proper paint to use near their product was latex or acrylic paint. After that I spent many more hours re-gluing the vinyl material onto all the cabinets with contact cement and clamps, again wearing a respirator to do this work. That vinyl veneer was well stuck to the cabinet boxes after I got done with it. With the exception of the lips of the door and drawer openings that are painted with latex paint, I painted the interior of all our cabinets with oil primer and oil paint. The interior of all the cabinets is now absolutely gorgeous. Between re-gluing the veneer onto the cabinets and the interior painting of the cabinets, I put in at least two hundred hours of hard work. However, once the cabinet doors started failing, the cabinets looked awful. I felt that all my work had been done in vain. After we had paid the company in full in good faith, and within just a few years of installation, the vinyl material on the cabinet doors and drawer fronts started bubbling up and delaminating. The edges of the doors and drawer fronts and the top of the crown molding started delaminating. I can now pull the vinyl refacing material off many of the doors and the crown molding with my bare hands. We never received a large (expensive) broom closet door. Rob Fagan failed to install it and drove off with it in his truck. When this company went bankrupt a few years later, we were told the door had been discarded. When some of the 46 cabinet doors were replaced by this company under warranty or for other reasons (such as when we paid to replace doors damaged by other contractors working on site), we received cabinet doors with different styles installed on the same cabinet! On the same cabinet, we had an arch style door hung next to a cathedral arch door. Many doors were replaced by this company under the lifetime manufacturer's warranty. However, within a decade, most of the (46) doors have now failed. Because our job had 46 doors and 26 drawer fronts, we were constantly worrying about bubbling doors and adhesive failures. We repeatedly kept asking this company for the missing doors. We kept asking for all the doors to be replaced under the lifetime warranty. The company never completed that replacement work. They went bankrupt before fixing all of our problems. Thus we truly feel that their company never really finished our cabinet job. After this company went bankrupt in 2009, I phoned the door and drawer front manufacturer and they pulled up the records of our job on their computer system. Unfortunately the cabinet door and drawer manufacturer told me the following disturbing information: 1. The manufacturer said they could no longer honor their lifetime warranty for the cabinet doors and drawer fronts; 2. The manufacturer said that they would re-wrap our doors and drawer fronts for free but that the doors and drawer fronts would then only have a two year warranty; 3. In addition, I would need to hire a different cabinet company to remove the doors and drawer fronts, transport them to the factory about a hundred miles from my house for rewrapping, and bring the doors and drawer fronts back to our house and install them; and 4. The manufacturer said that not all of the doors and drawer fronts had been purchased from their company. Thus I would have to either buy new doors and drawers from their company or figure out who the other supplier was and see if they would honor the warranty on what this company had provided. Given that we also had the issues of missing doors and mismatched styles of doors on the same cabinet to contend with, I told the manufacturer to simply forget about it. In 2010 and 2011, other cabinet companies send out their representatives to price the corrective work to our cabinets. The solution that was most frequently suggested for our issues was to rip everything out and buy all brand new cabinets and start completely over. Our countertops, backsplashes, flooring and walls are all now complete. We explained that replacing the cabinets is not an option for our situation. By 2009 (six to seven years after installation), in the master bathroom, sunlight had already turned the white vinyl veneer on the cabinet yellow. Many experts suggested buying new doors and drawer fronts and priming and painting them instead of fussing with the old doors and drawer fronts. Either way in a few years time as the vinyl veneer on the cabinets turned more yellow, the doors and the cabinets would then no longer match each other. This was disheartening news. For our entire set of ?maple look? kitchen cabinets and our hall pantry and laundry room cabinets, we would also have to put new maple wood veneer on the cabinets in addition to new maple wood doors. Then we would have to stain everything to match and apply several top coats of either lacquer or polyurethane. We could not simply leave the ?maple look? veneer in place on the cabinet boxes and install new stained doors as it would never match. Again, this was disheartening. During the research process, I decided to use polyurethane for the new top coat protective finish on the cabinet boxes, doors, drawer fronts, and trim molding. Most cabinet shops prefer lacquer. I purchased special order veneer core hardwood plywood about 1/8? thick from the Home Depot. It is made by Columbia Forest Products. We avoided any veneer made with an MDF (medium density fiberboard) core. In early 2012, we purchased unfinished new doors and drawer fronts in hard maple at a cost of over $4,000 from a company in California. The hard maple veneer, crown molding, and trim moldings to re-do the cabinets cost us an additional $1,300. We sanded the vinyl veneer on the cabinet boxes. We used a brad nailer to secure the new hard maple veneer onto the cabinet boxes. We used wood filler and sanded everything smooth. We applied one coat of gloss polyurethane followed by two coats of semi gloss polyurethane. We thought we could just apply one coat of gloss and one final coat of semi gloss polyurethane but it did not look that great. The third coat with the semi gloss polyurethane really made the difference. We still have a lot of work to do to finish 39 new doors and 26 new drawer fronts and the remaining cabinet boxes. Over a decade later, we are still working on getting these cabinets ready for us to use. The huge amount of time, labor, research, and physical effort it has taken and will still take to correct these issues has taken its toll on our health and our finances. The RTF (Rigid Thermo Foil) vinyl wrapped doors, drawer fronts, crown molding and trim molding that we received from this company will all soon be in the local remodeling landfill. If the material or the door itself feels at all like plastic or vinyl my advice is that you avoid it entirely at all costs. If someone wants a temporary facelift for their cabinets, with the intention of completely ripping everything out and buying brand new cabinets in 5 years or less, it is my opinion that Mr. Fagan's current product and service offering using Rigid Thermo Foil (vinyl wrapped doors) is a reasonable, viable, and cost effective option that would last around 5 years but not much longer than that. I think his new business is Fagan Cabinetry and Cabinet Refacing. It is very unfortunate that we were promised a lifetime solution in 2002 and that everyone involved failed to stand behind their written promises. I am glad that Mr. Fagan?s new company now offers a more reasonable five year warranty. I believe he now also offers refinishing and painting services for existing cabinets. I wish him the best in all his new business endeavors.

The product is inferior and the laminate does not hold. Subsequent problems with laminate received very poor service. Service was conducted in a very untimely manner. I feel like I have been given the run around and he keeps on giving me excuses. He does not return my calls unless I hound him. For a few dollars more do not resurface, just replace!

They were good, they had to come back and do things in a timely matter. We were satisfied.

The price of all of the work was half of the price of my estimate from another company and allowed me the capital to upgrade to a granite countertop. I loved the fact that this company worked with me when a couple of things that I chose didn't work well. They even returned the materials and gave me what I wanted at no additional charge. This is a family run business and they work very hard to give the customer what they want. They were late here and there and started a day late, but got the work done.