Kitchen of my Nightmares
Please do not believe these words "Bespoke and tailor-made to suit your home, all our kitchens are fully made-to-measure. Work with a Kesseler designer to create your dream kitchen"
My experience with this kitchen company has been a reoccurring nightmare from the moment I accepted them to do my kitchen project.
Believing the above I thought it would be relatively easy replacing a kitchen which had been water damage. The first person I met from the company was a designer, very pleasant guy who took a lot of detail about the original kitchen. The original layout worked for me and I told him unless he could come up with any better ideas, I wanted to stick with it. Out of three quotes that were accepted by the insurance company, I went with Saute and Soak, even though they weren’t the most expensive, "hindsight is a very good thing" from that point on the nightmare began.
It wasn't until things started to go wrong that I found out the person who originally came out, no longer worked for the company and none of the information he recorded had been passed on. Rather than informing me of the situation and starting again the new designer chose to wing it.
The original quote was for insurance purposes and in the words of the designer "Here is my first take on your kitchen along the lines we discussed." it was not the final draft and I believed the finer details would be to follow.
The new designer had no idea what I was wanting, as she never contacted me to ask, she just went by the computer generated images. It wasn't until I questioned why the sinks I wanted wouldn’t fit in, that I realised the layout and unit sizes were nothing like the original.
At this point I had paid 10% deposit and a further 80% to start production, immediately I put a hold on it, not even 24hours after the payment for which I was subsequently charged an extra £800 for.
For about two months after that, I worked on getting them to do the design as it was before, even ending up sending them a drawing on graph paper of the full layout with all the measurements and the original working drawing from the damaged kitchen. Even with all of this information they still could not get it right . I was told "we cant do cupboards like that in that size", or "there isn’t a cupboard door that size.” In other words they were not bespoke and they don't do made to measure.
This all started in March 2023, in December the kitchen arrived and to my astonishment, the hob I had chosen right from the beginning, wasn’t compatible with the design of the cupboards and drawers under it. Should they not have realised that, before its was put into production? Doors didn’t fit, handles were wrong and not matching and many other thing. At this point I asked for some legal advice, and they were given a deadline to correct things. The director of the company agreed to correct all the issues and promised I would get the kitchen I wanted.
Then to cap it all the fitters said they did not install appliances of plumb in the sinks and taps. I have never heard of someone supplying and fitting kitchen that is not functional until you get a seprate plumber and electrician in.
Be aware of them charging extra. The kitchen went up several thousand from the original quote, and somehow the utility which I was paying for myself to match the kitchen was quoted at £3,213.12 with £200 take of for supplying my own sink, then the invoice Total to Pay - £6,664.62 I have yet to find out what this is all about.
I am still waiting, almost a year on from the original designer coming out, and still have many issues to be resolved. This is holding up restoration of the other parts of the house that were danged, and I have not been able to live there for over a year now.
Do not go there with this company if you do decide to be very meticulous about everything. They need to be watched like a hawk.
26 February 2024
Unprompted review
