JT&T Cabinet Shop

Benji Gibson and his company, J&T Cabinet Shop ([*** Link removed ***] located in Wylie, Texas were hired by my General Contractor, Shawn Tunstall, to make custom cabinets for my kitchen and laundry room and tower shelves for my living room. I had hired a professional kitchen designer and spent significant time with her, designing the kitchen. The blue prints, 2D and 3D drawings and related measurements were provided to Gibson who took them and created his own Catia drawings. While doing so, Gibson made numerous changes and adjustments without discussing them with us. He would send his version of the design with changes and I’d have to ask him to change it back to the original plan. He would then correct the drawings but then change other items without discussing it, items that were correct on his first version but he felt needed to changed for some reason. This went back and forth about six times until we were back to the original kitchen designer’s design – it was a very frustrating few weeks. During this entire process, he was unprofessional and seemed agitated at my request to stick with the original designs. When the cabinets were delivered, there were a number of serious issues. First, when Gibson’s crew delivered the cabinets, two cabinets were dropped and damaged during delivery. The work to repair the damage was poorly completed on site and to this day the pantry door doesn’t properly sit flat. From the cabinets that remained, many were not what was on the design; cabinet faces were wrong, doors that were perpendicular from each other (cornered) were different sizes, three bottom cabinets that were supposed to have adjustable shelves did not, the sink was not centered over the window, the laundry cabinets were incorrectly measured and were slightly too long and had to be forced in place which scrapped up the wall severely, four shelves were cut too long and don’t fit in the cabinets and the cabinets themselves had dings and scraps upon delivery. The drawers were supposed to be dovetail joints and they are only nailed/glued together and the cabinets have soft close hinges but many drawers do not close property and stay open unless you manually push on them and they do not align properly. Then there was a huge issue with the hinges themselves; the soft close hinges were about three inches long and were attached to the cabinets with two small half inch screws on a one inch board while the remaining two inches floated in space. As you can imagine from basic physics, the two-inch side of that hinge gets bumped and the entire hinge will pull out so Gibson had to go back and add additional interior boards to the cabinets to close the gap to properly support the hinges. At first Gibson agreed that the hinges were wrong and he’d fix it for free but the next visit he changed his tune and demanded that I pay to add the support because “they were correct”. Gibson also delivered towers shelves which were completely wrong and had to be redone. What I signed off on was 16” x 16” x 96” square tower shelves that were supposed to be mirror images of each other with shelving on top and a door starting at 42” to the floor. What I got were two cabinets with toe kicks (like a kitchen cabinet), two doors of different sizes that both opened the same direction and started at 38” from the floor, the left wall was 1” thick while the right wall was 2” deep….. it was just a massive quality control error. Gibson was shown all the issues with the cabinets and he told me he would come back with the proper tools to fix them. He came back the first time with just a few tools and since he didn’t written down all the issues, things were forgotten and he didn’t bring everything he needed to complete the work properly. Realizing this problem, I provided Gibson with a detailed and itemized list of what needed to be fixed. He returned the second time and the third time without all the proper tools. The forth time he sent his employee and since he did not share the itemized list of problems, his employee did not bring all the proper tools. I provided the list and went through the problems with the employee and on the fifth and final time, after four weeks plus of having the entire remodel on hold, the employee came with all the tools and fixed the cabinets so that they were ready for paint (as I mentioned above, not all the cabinets were fixed properly, and some, like the pantry cabinet doesn’t sit or close properly). The shop is 14.3 miles from my home according to Google Maps and each of these unproductive trips would require a one hour round trip. The failure to have the cabinets properly inspected before leaving the manufacture site, poor selection or inspection of wood, hinge issues and measurement issues are all related to management issues and no internal quality control expectations or guidelines. The fact that the owner would personally come to the job site and attempt to perform the corrections seems odd and was unproductive. Once the painter had removed and reinstalled the cabinets, we learned another ugly fact about that cabinets and that is that the wood that was used was incredible soft and most of the screw holes had been already stripped. This use of substandard material made putting the doors back up and aligning them nearly impossible. There were also more dings and dents from the painters doing their work due to the wood’s softness. When the appliances were installed, we learned a second ugly fact, that the dishwasher, oven and refrigerator holes were not cut to the correct size and adjustments and/or cutting had to be made to make them fit. There was also a door who’s hinge backing was still a bit too thin so the hinge wasn’t properly supported and, as I predicted, the electrician bumped into the 2” floating side and the hinge pulled out, stripping the screw holes and making the door fall off, which of course dented the door more due to the soft wood. Throughout this entire process, Gibson was confrontational and aggressive towards me. He continuously told me that I am wrong and that his work was “perfect”. He tried, through intimidation and aggression to make me accept poor-quality work. Upon finding out that my General Contractor, Shawn Tunstall, was working illegally without a permit or required inspections, I fired him. Once Gibson learned this, he came over to my house while I had the plumber and tile guy working. He entered without knocking thus trespassing into my house. I found him at my kitchen table looking over some personal documents I had left there. I was alarmed by this behavior and ask him why he is in my house. He told me that the Contactor, did not pay him and that he had come to collect “his money.“ I explain that I paid Tunstall and that I would be happy to show him the checks as proof, but he did not want to listen and then threatened to take the cabinets if I did not pay him. I again refused and this went back and forth for a while. He then stated “One way or another, I’m going to get my money”. At this point I felt threatened and ask him to leave. Once he left I called the police and filed an incident report (See City of Plano Police Incident #: 16-192979).