Mastercraft Kitchens thrown into confusion by crown molding job
Greetings All !
OK, so when we last left our program, the tin ceiling and backsplash had been installed by Scott and Lisa of Nani’s Impresa.
(Quick side-note: I had mistakenly said that they were moving from Lawrence, KS to Atchison, KS. In fact, they are moving to North Kansas City.)
We were now waiting on two things:
1) JC Penney to come install the custom curtains (valences only, really… plus a Roman shade for the door).
2) Mastercraft Kitchens to come put the crown molding back into place above the cabinets… plus, install additional crown molding to go completely around the perimeter of the kitchen.
Well, JC Penney came out and installed the curtains just fine. I don’t have photos ready at the moment. We’ll get back to that later.
However, MasterCraft came out… and met with my wife and Lisa of Nani’s Impresa. Lisa was going to oversee the installation of the crown molding, to make sure that the workers didn’t dent it or flatten it.
Now, keep in mind, please, that MasterCraft Kitchens had quoted us $1000 to do this job. This included the taking down of the cabinet molding and ordering of additional molding, which they had already done.
It seems that the fact that the kitchen ceiling was now slightly LOWER than before… plus the fact that it was TEXTURED, seemed to surprise and stump the people at Mastercraft.
OK, so the fact that the ceiling was now a bit lower caused the upper part of the molding to now come further out from the cabinets, so that edges no longer met like they used to. According to Lisa, this seemed to confuse MasterCraft. Charonjeet, the owner, kept telling her that he and his men “had to regroup”. Just what does that mean?
Charonjeet ended up telling Lisa that her husband would have to cut back the edges of the tin so that it no longer went beyond the cabinet edge, towards the wall. In other words, the tin should no longer overlap the cabinets, he was saying. Lisa said she’d have to consult with her husband on this… but meanwhile, Charonjeet and his men were going to put up the rest of the crown molding around the perimeter of the room.
With that, Lisa left for the day.
And apparently, so did MasterCraft, because they didn’t put up the rest of the crown molding.
Scott from Nani’s Impresa came out the next evening and discussed this with my wife and myself. We agreed that it just didn’t make sense to cut back the tin ceiling. If you did, you’d then see the ragged edges of the tin, which would look terrible. This just isn’t how this sort of work is done.
Now, granted, I will admit that, ideally, this entire tin ceiling operation should probably have been done FIRST in this entire kitchen project. But my wife only really decided to get a tin ceiling after the new cabinets were in place. However, there is a solution here: skilled carpentry.
You’d simply have to plane down each piece of crown molding to account for the slightly-lowered ceiling.
When Scott and Lisa left that night, the plan was that my wife would call MasterCraft and give them one last shot at redemption. Meanwhile, Scott was going to call a friend whom he thought would be skilled enough to possibly plane down and install the crown molding for us.
So, the next morning… which was last week Friday… my wife called MasterCraft. Charonjeet was suppossed to call her back by the end of the day.
He never did.
So, on Saturday morning, Scott brought out his friend, who took a look at the situation. (I was out doing the grocery shopping, in preparation for a snow storm that was suppossedly headed our way.) The result of that meeting was that Scott’s friend thought that we should start over with new crown molding, which he could purchase, paint, plane (if necessary) and then install. We could tell MasterCraft to come pick up their materials and forget about it.
Scott called yesterday with a quote on this. We still haven’t heard back from Charonjeet. We’ve accepted Scott’s quote ($800) and he hopefully will be able to do this starting next week Monday.
As I write this, I understand that there’s a Home Show that’s coming up this next weekend. (Perhaps Charonjeet and MasterCraft Kitchens are so busy preparing for that that they cannot return our calls?)
My only hope is that SOMEBODY out there… some potential customer of Mastercraft… goes online…. tries to research the company… and stumbles upon this website!
If so, please feel free to post a “comment” here, letting me know about it! (There’s a link at the end of this article.) It’d make my wife feel better, if she knew that we warned a few people about them.
Be warned!: Their ads tout all sorts of testimonials. We now believe that ALL of these were given to the company when it was under PREVIOUS owners. This is NOT the same company.
While we are moderately happy with our cabinets (there are still a few minor installation-related problems with them)… we would NOT go with MasterCraft again for ANYTHING.
Thanks!
-= Dave =-