American Kitchen Corp

This company is a complete rip off. They do NOT do what they say; they do NOT do good work; they contract out jobs to unqualified crews; they use poor materials; they NEVER show up when they say they will. DO NOT uses American KItchen corporation. We ended up finishing the job ourselves and are living with some of their costly mistakes!

It was a nightmare! The cabinets were installed crooked and had so many Knicks and gashes. The tile floor was installed three times and there are still problems with it. The countertops were not level and several cabinets were just not installed correctly. The ceiling was supposed to be left in paint ready condition, but it took hours of sanding by us to get it ready to paint. They told us our small 10 x 8 kitchen would be a 6 week job. Ha! Try 8 months and we finally fired them and did the rest of the work ourselves. I would never recommend this contractor to anyone. They were rarely truthful, rarely did what they told us they were going to do. If you get one of their mailers or you stumble upon an American Kitchen coupon, do yourself a favor. Save yourself some money! Do NOT call them to remodel anything!

Approach this company with caution. Despite a snazzy website with numerous glowing testimonials, we did not have a good experience. We really wish we could write a better review, because the granite and cabinets are beautiful, and in the end, all (or nearly all) contract items were delivered, however, the overall project was very poorly managed and there remain some minor but irritating features of the finished kitchen that will serve as an ongoing reminder of three months of extreme stress. We completely realize that any home renovation is going to be disruptive, kitchens especially, however, this was much worse than it needed to be. This is how it went: Our 25 year old suburban, transitional style home was worn and tired, and in anticipation of kids moving away, and with the idea of remaining in beautiful North Carolina and in this house after retirement, we undertook a major facelift, part of which was to convert a combination living/kitchen contiguous space in the back part of the house into one giant kitchen, shifting the active kitchen area from the cramped narrow side of the space over to the larger living space, and converting the current kitchen to a large eating area with extra office space. We discussed our ideas with several contractors, but the quotes we received were not in our budget, and more than one of them said we just needed a bigger house. On a whim, we called the number on a glossy postcard from American Kitchen that had arrived in the mail, offering giant discounts on the kitchen of our dreams. Despite the name, this is a North Carolina company, a group of several builders that got together to focus just on kitchens. Their in home specialist came with a fancy computer design program and a laser tape measure, and within 30 minutes had a 3D rendition of exactly what we wanted. He showed us beautiful cabinet, granite and flooring samples, all clearly good quality, and calculated an estimated price that we thought we could afford. We signed the contract. Soon after, an engineer came and we spent several hours with him working out the details of the new kitchen. Materials were ordered, everything looked to be progressing well, deliveries began to arrive at our house. We were given an estimate of four or at most five weeks, given the relative complexity of the renovation, from the start of demolition to final signoff. We did not get this in writing. We should have. The first sign of trouble came with the start of demolition. Maybe it would be better to say non-start. We had confirmed the estimated date of demolition TWICE with American Kitchens (AK), and then scheduled our summer family vacation so we would be gone during the worst of it. One family member returned early to accept scheduled delivery of final materials, and be on site when the project started. No materials were delivered on the scheduled date. Family member called AK, only to be told that, oh, no, that was not the delivery date, in fact materials were not expected until late the next week. (note, out of narrative sequence, later examination of shipping documents showed that the materials had been received on the original schedule, but held by AK) Demolition began the day after we all arrived home from vacation. The kitchen was completely stripped out, and then NOTHING HAPPENED, for over two weeks. Our Contractor in Charge (CIC) had never worked in Durham county before, and was unfamiliar with the permitting process, and two weeks passed before proper permits were in place. The project, which we were told would take 4-5 weeks, was already 3 weeks behind schedule. A note on CIC's: AK project managers are not AK employees, they are subcontracted for individual jobs, and they in turn subcontract out electrical, plumbing and tile work; The CIC is also responsible for scheduling all the contractors, obtaining permits etc. Our CIC himself did the carpentry, including installation of all cabinets and accessories, also baseboards, crown molding any any miscellaneous work that did not fall to another subcontractor. Flooring and granite subcontractors were supplied through AK, however, for all the other work, the CIC needed to first find and obtain bids for the work. For a company this size, we think it would be expected that there would be a go-to list of electricians, plumbers etc. that frequently worked on AK projects, or at least for AK's more experienced CICs. This was not the case. Our CIC seemed not to know anyone, and none of the subcontractors who eventually did the work were anyone he had worked with before. Our CIC was a good carpenter, and we would consider hiring him independently for carpentry work. However, he had apparently never been trained in project management. For the most part, he did not even start getting bids for the next part of the project until one part was complete, then there would be a delay of a week or more before the next phase could start. One negative and awkward part of the project was that our CIC was very unhappy with his business arrangement with AK, and he made no secret of this, complaining often about how little he was getting paid, how little AK had budgeted for the subcontract work and how difficult it would be to find anyone who would do what AK had promised us for the amount available (leaving us to wonder what type of quality we could expect from whomever he eventually hired), also how AK should never have told us we could have certain design features, that these were difficult and expensive and he had not been fully informed of the extent of our "special" requests before accepting the contract. To give just one example, our design included a stove hood that vented to the outside, this was a primary consideration during the design phase and influenced where the stove was located. The design engineer did not check the full exhaust route, it turned out to be partially blocked by the air conditioner. However, it was still be possible to vent along that route with the use of properly shaped ducting, which we showed to and discussed with our CIC. We came home one day to find that the CIC had instead just directly routed the vent through the cabinet over the stove, resulting in the loss of nearly the entire cabinet space. We told both the CIC and AK on more than one occasion that we felt the details of the business arrangement should be between them, and that hearing about it day after day made us uncomfortable, however, the comments and complaints continued, although our CIC was always pleasant in his dealings with us. On the whole, the work was done fairly well, although in the end the project took twice as long as we had been told. We were so worn down by the end (that is a very long time to be without a kitchen sink), and also feeling sorry for our CIC (for the uninitiated, you form relationships with people who spend three months in your house!), that we let some things slide, and signed off before all details were addressed. One of the lights was never installed. There was a three way argument (one of many arguments) between AK, our CIC and the electrician regarding the specifications for the wires, and even though we tried to resolve it with AK after signing off, it was never addressed. Several of the cabinet handles are crooked. They are shiny, beautiful and eye catching, and CROOKED, some off by 3/16". This may not seem like a lot, but it annoys us every time we grab them, which is often. Unfortunately, the remedy would have been to redrill the holes, which could not be done without the old hole becoming visible, which would have been worse than crooked handles; the only true remedy would be to completely replace the cabinet doors, which we figured would be charged to our CIC, whom we were already feeling sorry for (see above). There are also crooked tiles, directly over the sink. We stare at their crookedness as we do the dishes and think we could have done a better job ourselves (the tile subcontractor was the only one who would do the job for the allotted sum; and it may have been beyond his skill level, it was an inset large tile with a border of granite "straws". He seemed very pleased with his work, I guess we are just softies not to point out the crooked straws, but by that time everything had set up and likely the entire wall would have needed to be pulled out. And it is only a little crooked. This is in the midst of beautiful gleaming granite, nice design, wonderful cabinets. Overall, we love our new kitchen. But the management was dreadful.