We recently made the mistake of buying custom made cabinets from this business - custom made being used loosely in this case. Most would consider the term to indicate a high end product a step or two above the kind of stock products available from the likes of Home Depot or Lowes. Instead we received cabinets that set a new mark in the industry - custom made junk.
I started out life as a cabinet-making apprentice, helped my father rehab any number of kitchens in investment homes, and installed a few of my own, including one in our most recent home. I’m no expert, but I know enough to appreciate what it takes to make a good cabinet and how to properly install them. What we received was the most poorly made garbage I have ever seen produced by a supposed professional, and the installation by Jose Rodriguez, the venerable gentleman who owns the business, was a joke - Jose Feliciano would have done a better job.
The first day should have clued me up - I have never seen an installer start with the base cabinets - it makes life too difficult when it comes to installing the wall cabinets later. Sure enough, on the second day Jose had to climb up on to the base cabinets (having first borrowed a step ladder from me because he didn’t consider it a basic part of his own equipment) and began clambering backwards and forwards on top of them to rule up the lines for the wall cabinets. Any installer worth his salt would have ruled up everything before even starting the installation.
It wasn’t until the second day, when the wall cabinets were being put in and the doors were being taken off to assist in the installation, that it dawned on me that the cabinets were frameless - bottom of the barrel construction that few companies carry for reasons of quality, customer preferences, and lack of rigidity. Our local Home Depot, which carries products from a number of high profile cabinet-making companies, has discontinued stocking frameless cabinets.
During the course of the day, as I passed by the work progressing in the kitchen, I watched with increasing apprehension at the proceedings, not least at the glimpses that were afforded me of the Laurel and Hardy attempts to ‘make’ unreasonable cabinets cooperate in the process of installation. First came the apparent disdain for using conventional shims - bits of old wood, and layers of laminate to fine tune proceedings, were the preferred methodology. I ended up lamely offering a packet or two of my own shims to make things easier. Then came the installation of the wall oven cabinet, which refused to cooperate in proceedings when Jose and his assistant tried butting it up to the neighboring cabinet. Answer? Kick the living hell out of it to make it go in place! What was probably just as disturbing was the nonchalant manner in which the action was taken right in front of me. Finally came the manner in which a wall cabinet proved itself to be an eighth of an inch or so distant from the oven cabinet. No problem for Jose - that’s what screws are for. The man simply grabbed a few and drilled them though the wall cabinet and into the oven cabinet, pulling who knows what out of shape to bring the two together.
Enough was enough, I thought. As soon as the mangler and his sidekick left for the day I pulled out my tools and began to go over the cabinets one by one - what I discovered left me disgusted and angry. Disgust at the quality of the cabinets and the installation, and anger at the presumption of stupidity on the part of the customer in terms of foisting such garbage on them. Everything and anything one could hope to find in poorly made cabinets was in evidence - cabinets out of square, cabinets inaccurately constructed (one by half an inch), doors with splits in them, holes for shelf pins inaccurately drilled and badly splintered, bubbling on some of the laminate, glue showing through laminate joins, poorly constructed drawers, crooked drawer fronts, etc, etc. As for the installation! Jose’s only rule seemed to be to draw a line horizontally along the walls and work to that exclusively - never mind that it was half an inch higher than standard height of 34.5”. As a result most of the cabinets look like they’re sitting up on stilts - on separate bases to boot - and are only horizontal in one plain along the wall where the line is. Practically everything else was out of level vertically and horizontally, and the base cabinets proved so topsy turvey across the top edges that one could take a level and easily see-saw it backwards and forwards where a number of the cabinets met. No granite installer worth his salt would lay a countertop down on such an uneven surface. Part of the installation was so crooked that it had angled out a number of the cabinets, while another had been shimmed out so much from the wall (the only one that had been accorded such treatment) in order to bring the top level with the other base cabinets that it was protruding out by nearly half an inch. The base and wall cabinets were so poorly misaligned along one wall that they were over quarter of an inch out in relation to one another, while the wall and base cabinets at one end were so far out of alignment that the wall cabinet stuck out by over an inch compared to the matching base cabinet below - thank goodness a wall to ceiling pantry or a similar cabinet had not been slated for installation there. God knows what would have been done to bridge the gap!
Think I’m exaggerating? Follow the link below to a slideshow and ask yourself if this isn’t the worst example you’ve ever seen of so-called professionally made and installed cabinets. Would you buy this garbage yourself, or trust Jose Rodriguez of JMR Cabinet making to deliver a decent product?
As bad as it has been to see what has been foisted on us, what we find equally insulting is the unapologetic and disingenuous attitude we’ve encountered since. Most people would be embarrassed to be caught out so badly palming off such poorly made and slackly installed cabinetry - not this guy. His steadfast refusal to acknowledge error is like something out of Monty Python’s ‘Parrot shop sketch’. ‘This is nothing’ came the reply. ‘I can fix it’. How the hell do you make cabinets that are crooked straight? How do you correct other cabinets that have been constructed inaccurately - hand them over to Thomas De Torquemada for stretching on the rack, or maybe sprinkle some pixie dust over them? How do you fix three doors with cracks in them? How do you correct every single cabinet with poorly drilled and chipped holes for shelf hardware? How do you make holes disappear where you’ve lazily joined cabinets together? And how much work do you have to put in to install proper framing that should have been in place to start with?
The BS from this guy is just as insulting as his product, coming out with just about anything he can think of to avoid acknowledging the bleeding obvious - that his product is crap and that the installation just as bad. An apology and an acknowledgment would have gone a long way towards ameliorating a bad situation of his own making. But unfortunately, Jose Rodriguez exemplifies why the ability to accept responsibility for one's own actions, to show some character and integrity, has become such a rare commodity in this day and age.
We have since found out that we are not the only ones who have encountered problems with the non-disclosure of framing - or lack thereof. The person concerned had other issues with the product as well, but where the framing was concerned she ended up having to pay extra to have them retro-actively fitted. The answer proffered to her, and to us, was that she should have specified that she wanted framing. One might as well state that the sale price on cabinets is exclusive of the doors, or that the engine or wheels on a car are extras. Framing is standard practice with the vast majority of cabinets these days, not an option - as stated earlier, major retailers such as Home Depot won’t even stock them anymore, because they’re considered cheap and bottom of the barrel.
We were also told from the start to expect delays, as the guy says one thing and does something else. The initial deadline had been to have everything installed in time for Thanksgiving. By mid December I was wondering if I'd at least be able to have the kitchen ready as an early Christmas present for my wife. Fat chance.
You would think that Jose Rodriguez would have taken the hint when we voiced our displeasure and he came round for a guided tour of all the faults, but no, this guy is made of different stuff. Call me crazy, but if anyone had reason to start talking about lawyers it should have been us, but no, after trying to gloss over everything and realizing he was getting nowhere, Jose started shamelessly muttering about suing us for the rest of his money! Can you believe that? We just wanted his garbage out of our home and our prepaid 50% returned to us, and I happily informed him that if he wanted to take matters up legally I’d line up tradesmen to testify what a pile of junk his cabinets were. He finally changed tack and agreed to issue us a refund, leaving with the promise to return with the money and a truck to remove the cabinets.
Two days passed and we still hadn’t heard from Mr. JMR, so we finally got in touch with him only to discover that he was reneging on his agreement now that he was out of range - a liar as well as a lousy craftsman. Should that surprise? The new tack was to claim he’d lose money by taking the cabinets back (what did he think the implication of stating that he would issue a full refund meant?) and that he suggested that we keep the cabinets for the 50% we’d paid, plus another $1,000 for all the pieces that were still missing from the cabinets - 6 doors, a drawer, shelves, a couple of cabinets, and the trim - without which the whole kitchen might as well be trashed, a fact he’s well aware of. As I said to my wife though, I didn't care if the entire lot was given to us for nothing, we’d still be stuck with a deeply flawed kitchen - and I don’t appreciate anyone trying to force their faulty products on me (plus another $1,000 to make it usable) nor do I have any time for people who can’t keep their word.
In the meantime I see it as my civic responsibility to warn anyone and everyone against using this deplorable businessman’s services for their kitchen cabinetry - it’s simply far too much of an investment to waste on the shoddy services of this individual. This web page is the start, and follow up complaints will be filed elsewhere online, with the BBB and other agencies, as well as any other avenue I can think of.
Thanks for reading, and if you ever hear of anyone else looking to install a custom kitchen, ensure they steer away from JMR and Jose Rodriguez. Remember that name.