Home Hardware - Appleby Mall

If you’re looking for a kitchen renovation, I’d advise you to look elsewhere.

By the time my renovation was "finished", there were 1/4-inch gaps in the mitred baseboard seams; visible marks on the painted walls; and crumbled tile grout. The pull-outs beneath the kitchen sink banged against the cupboard doors below. After complaining again and again (and being told I was "fussy"), the baseboards and paint have been fixed and the pull-outs mostly fixed, but my kitchen still has a chip on one door, a crack in the crown moulding and crumbling grout in the tile floor.

Here's what went down: To begin with, the kitchen designer, Asif, drew up a good design. He listened when I wanted changes to suit my lifestyle. He answered my questions and helped me choose materials.

Strike one: To address the cold floor, the contractor suggested that I get spray foam insulation installed using a company he knew. He arranged the job, and recommended that I vacate my home while the insulation off-gassed. During that time, he lost my house-key. He called a locksmith and, unbeknownst to me, kept a key for his crew, too.

When that contractor went on vacation, his sons continued to work. They used "their" key to let themselves in my house each morning --- long after I had returned to stay home again (and had told them so). They would not even ring the doorbell. I knew that they would be arriving each day, but it was still unsettling to have them just unlock the door and walk in.

One afternoon, after they'd left for the day, I went upstairs to change my clothes. I was standing in the loft with no pants on, when I heard the key turn in the door lock downstairs, and one of the contractors called out, "It's just me! I left my coat! I'll lock the door behind me!" The next morning, I asked for "their" key.

Strike two: The contractors heated their lunches in my not-yet-installed microwave. The first day it was installed over my stove, I had the pleasure of cleaning out the dried-up spatters from their lunches.

Still, at the end of the day, I can overlook a few issues if the work is done well. Unfortunately this wasn't the case.

The seams of the crown molding looked "rubbed" or "worn", which they tried to cover with a waxy touch-up marker, but it showed; the gaps in the mitered baseboards were 1/4-inch wide - filled with caulking (but that doesn't work to fill such large gaps); the light rail was chipped and poorly patched; and the undersink pull-outs fell and chipped the cupboard door below.

Twice I expressed my disappointment to the contractor. The first time, he responded that "some people are fussier than others"; then he said that if I were going to expect a better job, I should have "paid more like $40,000". (He later apologized via text.)

That was strike three. Apology aside, neither of those responses to a customer complaint is acceptable. I do not accept the blame for someone else's poor workmanship.

The contractor returned a few times to correct badly mitred baseboards and to touch up paint. It looked terrible, with brush marks on the walls and baseboard paint spilling onto the wall.

After I forwarded a draft of this review to the Home Hardware kitchen designer, the store owner met with me and the designer, and they sent out someone to fix the crumbled grout and poor paint job. They adjusted the under-sink pull-outs.

I will say that the one thing the contractors did well was tile backsplash: it looks great. The electrician's work was also excellent, and the installers for the granite countertop were good.

I'm also happy with the fixtures - nice countertop, good floor tile, decent cupboards - but upon completion, much of the workmanship was sorely inadequate.

But it's still not finished. When someone came to change the scratched cupboard handles, he chipped the cupboard door. Now the crown molding is cracking at the seam. The grout in the floor tile is crumbling again.

These are little things, but it's been 9 months and I still have to call and complain or they won't get fixed. I hired another contractor to renovate my bathroom and didn't have any such problems. He even used the left-over grout from the kitchen job to tile the bathroom floor, and it's not crumbling the way the kitchen grout does.

I would NOT recommend the Appleby Home Hardware in Burlington for a renovation project, particularly a kitchen.