LOWE'S

This saga is way too long to get into ALL the details. For other Angie's list viewers these are the bottom lines. If you go to the Lowe's in Butler PA work with Sheri Kirkwood to design your kitchen or bath. She is kind, friendly, and very good at what she does. She is also patient because I spent about two months and many visits to figure out what cabinets and options I wanted. Do not work with Jayne. Every time I've had to interact with her it's been horribly unpleasant and I plan on contacting Lowe's corporate about her. The one manager Adam was also very helpful and always polite and nice. The store manager Shawn would never agree to speak with us directly. We looked at the Diamond Prelude and Shenandoah lines of cabinets. Because of price, the style of door, and color of stain we choose the lower priced Shenandoah in Cherry wood. BE AWARE that this company uses lower quality cherry wood so be prepared to see defects (small and large) in the wood. Shenandoah is produced by American Woodmark. If you walk into Home Depot you will see the same cabinets but labeled American Woodmark not Shenandoah. At Home Depot I actually saw a sign that showed the types of marks you may see in your cabinets, but Lowe's does not advertise this. We got our shipment of cabinets and 25% of them had defects ordamage. Of that 25%, 56% of the cabinets had defects in the wood itself such as shakes, grooves, or worm tracks, and defects in the finishing such as uneven staining. The trim was really bad in that some of it was just cracked in half and THEN stained. There does not seem to be any quality vetting in the American Wookmark factories. Lowe's was very accommodating and ordered us replacements through the Shenandoah sales rep Jaime Rex. I had to spend hours sending her pictures of the cabinets and trim we wanted replaced. It was a great inconvenience and our remodel was delayed waiting on the replacements to arrive. When they came we were dismayed that these cabinets also had defects. My father is a woodworker with over 50 years experience. He examined them and said they were basically a good construction but the wood was simply a lower quality which is why I was able to get cherry cabinets at that price point. However, we still spent close to 10 grand and even he agreed that for that much money the wood shouldn't be flayed to that extent. I talked to Sheri at Lowe's and also the manager Adam. They had the Shenandoah sales representative Jaime Rex come to my house to examine the cabinets. Ms. Rex may be a very nice person, I don't know her well enough to say, but for a sales person her personal skills are not good. She was argumentative and stubborn and tried to tell me that ALL cherry wood has worm tracks. Worms kills trees so if that were true there would be no cherry trees. Anyway, after a short time I ended the visit. In the end we got a third set of replacements - with again defects. Our whole project was now a month behind and that's a long time with no kitchen. We felt that our inconvenience should be compensated. Lowe's gave us some money but Ms. Rex took pictures of some boxes that were torn during delivery and had the trucking company pay us money even though they were not responsible for what we were complaining about. Shenandoah also made Lowe's pay the majority of the discount given to us. In summary, Lowe's did everything they could to make us happy. Shenandoah replaced cabinets, but in the end, was not interested in customer satisfaction so I would not recommend you buy from them. Also be aware that with both Lowe's and Home Depot you must commit to having them install your cabinets BEFORE you order them. We did not and when our general contractor never returned to the job, we asked for Lowe's for help in installing the cabinets and was turned away. If I had to do it over, as wonderful as Sheri Kirkwood was, I would go to American Home Masters. They did a wonderful job installing these cabinets but you can also buy cabinets through them.