Clear Vertical Grain Fir Cabinet Mismatched Trim

[Jack Pinkham]

island trim2.jpg

This is a photo of the kitchen island our contractor is finishing. I've objected to the mismatched
wood. The panels and the corner moldings are supposed to be CVG fir. His response is "that's wood". Would you accept this?

Thanks!

[Sam Murdoch]

"Would you accept this?"

If the panel is plywood then my answer is yes - unless you have very carefully specified otherwise. Nearly impossible to blend solid wood with a veneered plywood. On the other hand if both are of solid wood a better job could have been done of it. Keep in mind though that the edge grain that would be showing on that face of the trim is different than the flat grain of the panel. The face grain of the trim will likely be to the front. If your primary faces are good and you only have issues with this end(?) panel I would go easy on being critical. Again, this all depends on the details of your contract. Unless everything was specified to be color consistent all around CVG you are asking for more than you should expect. Were you expecting some stain matching or a clear coat throughout? Did you agree to pay for that level of wood selection? There will always be variation. I object more to the filled nail holes than to the mismatched color. To be fair you need to show us more of what you find objectionable.

[Jamie Buxton]

You say "panels and the corner moldings are supposed to be CVG fir" as though you think one or the other is not. However, both the parts in that photo are indeed vertical grain fir.

[Jack Pinkham]

"Would you accept this?"

If the panel is plywood then my answer is yes - unless you have very carefully specified otherwise. Nearly impossible to blend solid wood with a veneered plywood. On the other hand if both are of solid wood a better job could have been done of it. Keep in mind though that the edge grain that would be showing on that face of the trim is different than the flat grain of the panel. The face grain of the trim will likely be to the front. If your primary faces are good and you only have issues with this end(?) panel I would go easy on being critical. Again, this all depends on the details of your contract. Unless everything was specified to be color consistent all around CVG you are asking for more than you should expect. Were you expecting some stain matching or a clear coat throughout? Did you agree to pay for that level of wood selection? There will always be variation. I object more to the filled nail holes than to the mismatched color. To be fair you need to show us more of what you find objectionable.

The panels are plywood and the trim is solid. The contract is basic. The contractor had us choose the finish. We chose clear. It wasn't mentioned that the CVG plywood had a different
color than the solid- more yellow tones, than red. We expected naively, perhaps, that all the wood would have a consistent color.

Some of our dissatisfaction is with the trim moldings themselves. They seem like an afterthought. They are only on the back of the island. Our expectations were high because of all the boasting of the contractor as to his expertise. He claims to have taught cabinetmaking to the
workers of a local high end remodeler. We began doubting him when he installed our corner cabinets with no clearances for door swings. He also installed crown molding without scribing it-
just bending it to follow the dips in the ceiling. He assured us that we were the first to complain.

So trust is an issue, as is our poor contractual judgement. He does have the gift of gab and we bought it all.

[Matthew Bradburn]

You'll find that the fir will redden over time with UV exposure, and hopefully your plywood will gradually come to match the solid stock -- at least better than it currently does. You do have a grain mismatch as well as a color mismatch, and of course the grain mismatch is permanent.

I'm currently building cabinets for my own kitchen in clear-finished CVG fir, and I have the same color matching problem. I don't know of a good solution to that -- it's hard enough to find boards with grain to match the plywood that I haven't been able to try to match the color.

Those nail holes are pretty sad...

[Jim Riseborough]

What brand are they, perhaps the mfr can help. Otherwise, sounds like a bad contractor

[Phil Thien]

I predict the plywood panels will darken with time. Hopefully the finish that was used doesn't have a UV blocker!

[Jack Pinkham]

I predict the plywood panels will darken with time. Hopefully the finish that was used doesn't have a UV blocker!

He said that the finish does have a UV blocker, but that it wasn't really that effective.

[Jack Pinkham]

The contractor is quite irritated at us after I sent him a list of corrections that should be done.
He started out by asking if the rest of our house was perfect, implying that we should be happy with what we get.
Anyway, one of the items on my list was that the one frameless 42" tall wall cabinet that he has a door on (after 90 days for a 13x15 kitchen) has about a 5/16" reveal at the top of the cabinet and an 1/8" reveal near the bottom. I'm referring to the distance between the side edge of the door and the side edge of the cabinet. I mentioned that perhaps he might just need to adjust the hinges. However, I wonder if he cut the door
incorrectly, since the door bottom is now level with the cabinet bottom.Wall Cabinet Reveal.jpg
BTW, the ceiling trim is solid and it seems to match the plywood better than the pieces he put on the corners of the island.

So am I being picky asking that the door not have a tapering reveal? I have a premonition that all the wall cabinets are going to have uneven door reveals.

[glenn bradley]

Your contractor's reply is short sighted as far as any hope for repeat business goes. He should have said something like, "plywood (particularly pre-finished ply) and hardwood rarely match, to achieve a blend I would have to dye all the material blah, blah, extra cost, blah, blah . . .". Much easier to hear than "tough beans".

[Peter Quinn]

This is a photo of the kitchen island our contractor is finishing. I've objected to the mismatched
wood. The panels and the corner moldings are supposed to be CVG fir. His response is "that's wood". Would you accept this?

Thanks!

Yes. I would accept this. Unless these were custom cabinets with finished end panels, that is what it is. Plywood rarely matches solid stock perfectly, or even very well, in any species. Cherry, mahogany, walnut, QSWO are just a few I've used where the sheet stock is significantly different in color, sheen, tone, and grain. They choose the finest trees for veneer, steam the dickens out of them so they are dull and flat, sometimes washed out looking, glue them down then machine sand them hard. The solids are probably fresh select & better, planed through an S4S machine, sanded just enough to prepare for finish. So the two things come out significantly different. The solution would be built into the design (raised applied end panels from the same stock as the doors/face frames), and if these are basic factory cabs, would likely be an expensive upgrade. Stock shops don't often do custom well and they tend to price it prohibitively for that reason. Even in a custom shop you are going to pay for what you spec, and slapping a piece of plywood on the end of two back to back cabs to create an island is a lot less work than the alternative, so cheaper.

I agree that if there is some decent sun in this room the colors will naturally approach each other over a year or two. A decent finisher could probably mask off the end panels and spray a few coats of a toner to darken/redden the ends to mach the FF material, but this would certainly be outside the scope of most installers contracts and I would not expect that sort of work be included.

[Sam Murdoch]

Jack, this thread makes me cringe. Sadly, it sounds like you hired the wrong guy. But now what? I vote that you pick your battles. The finish is a done deal. The reveals at the doors is another issue. No one should need to accept such an inconsistency. Even an 1/8" is huge in my book but it doesn't sound like this guy will be willing or able to make the proper correction, which might be after all, to build a new door. I'm afraid you will likely find lots of other issues if you start looking - today or after 3 months of use. Your options as to how to proceed with asking for corrections will be limited to the terms of your contract and this guys need for a recommendation from you. Does he have a business profile on Facebook, Angies List, or Linkedin? Threatening to give negative reviews or faint praise can be a powerful motivator - just be careful of having a mad uncaged grizzly builder in your kitchen.

[Alan Bienlein]

!/8" reveal is standard. Anything larger then you have grounds to complain.

If the cabinets are euro and he just screwed them to the wall with out proper shimming to make them level and plum your reveals WILL be all over the place.

I have seen where the door or drawer fronts were flush with the bottoms of the cabinets but the reveals ran off up the sides due to improper install ie not plumb and level.

As to the color mismatch. Unless you specifically said you wanted it all to match and of course there will be a nice price tag on that then it is what it is. No cabinet shops that I'm aware of will color match unless it's paid for.

Now if you had gone with a stain then they could tone it and that's what we do. We will actually line the cabinets how they go before we load them up and the finisher would come over with his touch up gun and correct any variations that stood out.

[Richard Coers]

Here is a place where a good kitchen designer would have saved you some headache. When a customer accepts the responsibility of being the designer, they accept ALL RESPONSIBILITY. Inexperience on your part does not lay the blame on the contractor. There is no way he can explain every possible thought you may have in the future about your choices. A designer would have talked to you about color, and hopefully had the experience of color variations. Do all the boards in your hardwood floor match? Of course not. The contractor is right, this is wood. If you demand exact color match across the entire line of cabinets, special considerations and cost would have been incurred. I'm guessing you would not have liked to pay the costs involved. Also, I don't know any contractors that are custom high end cabinet makers. He may have never had anyone complain about exact color match that some customers will demand. The door alignment problem looks to be a simple fix to me. But, as these issues escalate, simple may be a relative term. Too bad the end of the project has gone so badly.

[J.R. Rutter]

Not to pick on the OP, but this is why I chose to shift my business from retail to wholesale. In a few years, there will be a evening of color and development of a patina that will make a much more uniform whole. But when it is time to write that last check, expectations and emotions are both running high on the part of the customer, while the contractor is hoping to see enough profit to make it all worthwhile.

Wood is such a variable "product" that there will always be inconsistency, especially on day one. After year one, they will be much less obvious. I recently built a kitchen's worth of CVG Fir doors. Inevitably, the plywood was tighter grain and lighter color than the rails and stiles. For twice the price, I might have been willing to order 200% more material, sort for color and grain, and return the overage. But even then, it would be difficult to guarantee "perfection."

For color/grain mismatch, I might try to meet in the middle by doing new parts at cost. On the door size/reveal issue, I personally would just make a new one to get that last payment in hand...