So, here’s what happened…

By Posted on 3 min read 1014 views

I’ve had a few emails over the last few days asking what happened with Porcelanosa.

Well, I’ve been quiet for a reason.

Here’s what happened…

A week ago last Friday the UK’s commercial manager for Porcelanosa came out to site to see us.

He took one look at the kitchen they’d supplied and agreed it wasn’t right.

To be completely fair to him, he was straight with me, didn’t try and make out that there weren’t issues and we came to an agreement which involved some compensation and them re-making the doors in one colour, and fixing the appliances that wouldn’t work in the design.

It’s important to remember that by this time my mum had already made a lot of comprises regarding the design she actually wanted.

We all thought it was resolved, so the kitchen fitters moved back in on Saturday to finish fitting it.

And… we found that the dishwasher door wouldn’t allow the dishwasher to open. There’s only one dishwasher on the market that can have a door that length on it, and it wasn’t the one recommended by their designer.

*sigh*

“Never mind, they’ve agreed to replace the other items, I’m sure they will do the same with this one.”

Was the thought that ran through my mind.

Picture Monday morning last week, I thought the kitchen troubles were over, all I had to do was ring about the dishwasher.

7:45am the contractors are on-site and the final elements, such as taps, are going in when there’s a knock on the window of my office.

With an impending feeling of doom I trudge outside, into my mum’s kitchen to discover…

The tap supplied is one of those beautfiul large monobloc taps.

But the problem is that they’d designed my mum’s cabinets a bit lower than standard, because she’s not the tallest of people, and hadn’t considered that when they chose the tap.

Which meant… the top of the tap scraped the bottom of the wall cabinets.

I mean FFS!

At that point I decided there was no more compromise, the whole kitchen had to go back.

And to be fair to Porcelanosa, they had the regional manager here three hours later to organise it and the next day, Tuesday last week, the truck arrived to pick it up.

Wacthing it leave was one of the best moments of the entire build!

Everybody on site breathed a sigh of relief.

What’s happened since?

Before the kitchen was taken out on Tuesday morning, we got Simon from Benchmarx round who has worked tirelessly with us to re-create the original kitchen my mum designed.

(with a few improvements!)

The kitchen started arriving on Wednesday afternoon, all of it was here by Friday afternoon last week and the kitchen fitters have already fitted it except for appliances.

So in less than a week we are further ahead than we got with Porcelanosa in nearly 3 weeks.

And for a fraction of the price.

Yeah, the cabinets aren’t custom made, but you would have no idea once the doors are on.

In summary…

Would I use again or recommend Porcelanosa? No way.

The Commercial Director was very helpful and got everything sorted as quickly as possible.

However, I don’t think this would have happened if I hadn’t been tweeting about it.

The bottom line is that the kitchen designer pretty much ballsed the entire thing up, from design through to ordering.

I’ve since met people from another kitchen company who fired him for doing exactly the same thing.

So it could just be the kitchen designer we were unlucky enough to end up with.

But one thing’s for sure, this kitchen has been the most stressful part of building two new houses, and that says something.

What do you think?

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