Lowe's

On January 21st 2022 we purchased a kitchen cabinet package from Lowes Home Improvement in Pittsboro, NC. Carolina Construction & Restoration, LLC (based in Lillington, NC) was subcontracted through Lowes Home Improvement to install the cabinets.

Costs

Materials: $34,599.46

Labor: $3,525.70

Tax: $2,668.76

Total: $40,793.92

Going into this project we had two rules for the design of the kitchen.

1. Every exposed surface must have a decorative panel

2. We did not want a lazy susan installed in the corner.

Everything else we were flexible on. The designer for Lowes (Wendy) assured us that she would be able to provide a kitchen that met those two stipulations.

Due to cost, we initially decided to purchase Shenandoah brand cabinets. Wendy convinced us to switch to KraftMaid brand cabinets. This significantly increased the price but it would allow us to avoid having a lazy susan in the corner. To be clear, the reason we switched to the much more expensive cabinets is to avoid having a lazy susan in the corner and to add glass door cabinets, think feature piece with crown molding, for additional classy storage. When we made the switch for these promised pieces from our original Shenandoah cabinet design it nearly double the price.

We can’t close out the permit for our renovation until our permanent sink is installed. Carolina Construction has changed their story about the sink several times. First they couldn’t install it unless the counter tops were installed first. Then they had to install it before the counter tops. Now they say they can install the sink but they have to disconnect the dishwasher until the counter tops are installed. If the dishwasher isn’t installed, we still won’t be able to close out the renovation permit.

Our contractor was supposed to cut the vent for the stove but because this has taken so long, he had to move on to other jobs. So now we’ll have to hire someone to install the stove vent because Carolina Construction does not install vent stoves. This isn’t to mention the additional 700 dollars we had to pay our electrician for the island outlet because he had to keep checking in to see when it would be ready. Also the sheer amount of damage trying to store all the parts of the kitchen in the house has done to the walls and floors as they’ve needed to be shifted and moved multiple times.

They have repeated messed up ordering and installation and we've been without a functioning kitchen since April of this year. We are repeatedly being mislead in what will happen and what Lowes is taking responsibility for with the most recent problem being they said they would install our sink the day before Thanksgiving but instead removed the temporary sink and just placed the sink in but did not hook it up and disconnected our dishwasher.

We have spend hours upon hours dealing with this over the last six months and it’s still not done. It’s still not right. We do not have the kitchen we were promised. We paid far more than we intended and didn’t get either of the two simple stipulations that we wanted.