Jeffrey L.
1/5
I'm sorry to say that we did not have a good experience with Defined Details. In personal terms, Nicholas and Julie are very friendly people, but their craftsmanship and responsiveness are not good.
We had cabinets made by Defined Details, the finish of the wood is very good, the drawers are good, but the cabinet doors were a problem. The hinges came loose from the wood frame. It turns out, Defined Details used screws that were too short. They came to our home to replace the screws with the longer ones that the hinges required. As I was watching them do the work, however, I noticed that the screws were for metal and not for wood (screws for metal have different threading than those for wood). When I called this to their attention, Nicholas asked me if I wanted them to use wood screws. A surprising question. Yes, of course, to mount something into wood, one should use wood screws. So they sent one of their workers to get the proper screws, while I was left wondering why I needed to insist on something so obvious. Since then, most of the cabinet doors are working okay, other than one that came off again. I suspect that this is due to the hole for the screw having been used, now, a couple times, is not holding the screws in place. To my disappointment, however, Defined Details has not responded to two emails asking them to come out and fix this problem. They simply are not willing to stand by their product.
Another point of annoyance, Nicholas did not ensure that cabinet edges were square (picture attached). Instead orthogonal panels of wood are not flush at corners, as they should be. I have never seen this before, and when I asked Nicholas about it, he insisted that it was intentional, part of his design. Yet this is not consistently done at all edges. Some fit together as they should, others do not. If you decide to employ Defined Details for cabinets, you might ask about this and make sure that pieces of wood are fitted flush at the corners, as I think they should be.
We also had Defined Details make and install two doors, one in back and one in front. The back door is fine, but the front door was not properly measured. Nicholas came out twice to measure the frame and the existing door. He even used the existing door as a sort-of template. But the new door had a gap with the frame of 1/2 inch. Yes, that's right, 1/2 inch. After seeing the problem, Nicholas decided that he needed to rush away to another job. Honestly, they are such nice people, I tried to look beyond this, but when I took a closer look I realized that a 1/2 inch gap is quite a problem. Sunlight was actually shining through the gap. I asked Defined Details to come out and fix this problem, and I showed them a picture of the problem (gap with ruler showing its size, attached). I suggested that they could, for example, build out the frame. No word, they have never responded. I have since built the frame out to solve this problem, but, really, I shouldn't have had to do this. Proper measurement would have avoided this problem. If you decide to employ Defined Details for a door, you might specify the size of the gap that can be tolerated (1/8 inch is probably reasonable).
Anyway, we will not be using Defined Details again. We are disappointed in the quality of their work and their lack of responsiveness to getting their own work fixed.
Jeffrey J. Love
In the response below, you will see that they don't actually address the issues raised in our review. The entry lockset is not the issue (though the contract called for the doors to be "made to fit working with re-use of existing lock sets"). The issues are the front door that wasn't properly fitted to the frame (as shown in the picture) and cabinet doors that come off due to improper mounting of hinges. Defined Details never responded to requests to come back and fix these. I have, myself, built out the frame to address the front door problem, one that Defined Details should have fixed themselves. If and when they do fix the cabinets, I will be happy to update this review.
