David Hecht Custom Kitchens and Baths has been in the kitchen and bath remodeling business since 1957, and spans three generations. Our founder, David Hecht, wanted to create an interactive kitchen shopping experience where customers could come to a showroom to see and touch what they would ultimately be purchasing. By combining beautiful, quality cabinets, with expert installation and design, we truly set ourselves apart.
Home improvement stores offer the advantage of being able to visit one store to purchase a variety of items for your home. Typically, their prices are low, so homeowners get in the habit of visiting these stores every time they need something for their home. We even purchase some items for our own homes at these stores.
While the convenience of a one-stop-shop with competitive pricing for all things home improvement can be great for some items, these stores may not be the best choice for a kitchen or bathroom renovation project.
Some Common Misconceptions That You’ll Definitely Want to Consider:
Our clients who have visited national chain stores before visiting our showroom are often surprised by how competitive our pricing is. There is a misconception that because these stores have low prices on most products, that they would also offer the best value for a new kitchen or bathroom.
Purchasing a kitchen or bathroom is very different from purchasing a new chainsaw, paint, or any other home improvement product. The main difference is that these products are built in a factory, packaged, shipped to the store, and then placed on a shelf to be purchased. They don’t require design, project management, and the collaboration of contractors in order for you to get the finished product that you are looking for. With these factors in mind, let’s delve into what it takes to have a successful, easy, remodel!
1. Good Design Matters
Good design is essential to having a kitchen work well, functionally, and also look stellar. We have decades of design experience, and can customize cabinets to fit our designs perfectly. The national chains have designers who are not trained on how to design with custom cabinets. When we’ve worked on a design from a box store, we can often eliminate useless cabinets, fix critical function and flow-problems, create a design that customers are way happier with, AND, save them money in the process.
2. Not all Cabinets are Made of Equal Quality
Having a good quality cabinet is paramount to a kitchen that will last for many years of being cooked and lived in. The nicest cabinet lines that the box stores sell are not comparable in quality to the least expensive cabinets that we offer. We find that, oftentimes, we are very competitively priced compared to the nicest cabinets that the box stores offer.
What makes a great cabinet is a combination of many things, from cabinet box construction, drawer construction, cabinet hardware (hinges and drawer slides), etc, but the most important thing is a great finish. When we go into a home that is in need of a new kitchen, most times, the part that is showing the most wear on the cabinets is the area around the handles.
A great quality finish will hold up to everyday use admirably, and last for years. Our cabinets are truly built to last decades. They’re built in North America by artisans and manufacturers that have a long-standing tradition of quality.
The finishing processes, attention to detail, and material selection that sets our cabinets apart, simply is not matched by a box store offering.
3. When it Comes to Cabinets, Choice is Meaningful
The other benefit of a great quality cabinet is that they are extremely customizable. Our cabinets are entirely custom in their size, shape, interiors, and more. If our clients can dream it, we can make it a reality. Custom design means no wasted space. Custom sizing means no wasted money.
We have a large variety of materials, finishes, and styles of kitchen cabinets to choose from. Our cabinets are fully custom, so think of it like a “custom cabinet maker”. A craftsman in their backyard shop, building your cabinets. It’s the same end result with our cabinets, but instead of an individual, ours are built by hundreds of skilled cabinet makers. Our cabinets can be customized, just like a local cabinet maker, but come with the benefits of better machinery and finishing processes that come from a larger scale shop.
This ensures that your custom kitchen cabinets will arrive on time while maintaining the highest level of quality control.
The cabinets from a box store do not, and cannot offer this type of customization. Their factories are not set up to change the interior of a glass door cabinet to a special exotic wood, or polished stainless. There are set modifications that can be used and that is it.
4. Measure Twice (or Three Times!), Cut Once
Our 60 years of experience has taught us that triple checking all of our orders, and measurements to make sure things fit perfectly, and all the parts are ordered correctly, is well worth the extra time. You are unlikely to get this amount of care and attention with the large chain stores.
Unfortunately, if something is not ordered correctly, it’s not realized until the installers are already in the middle of doing the installation. This means that you will be without a kitchen even longer as you’ll need to wait for the corrected cabinets or parts to be built and shipped, and there is no guarantee that the installers will be available right away when the corrected items come in.
5. Installation is not the place to roll the dice:
With all this experience of designing our clients’ dream kitchens and baths, we’ve learned a lot about how to make the installation process as smooth as possible. We also have assembled a dedicated team of professionals who have worked with us for over 20 years on our custom kitchens and baths. The quality of their work is truly magazine-worthy, and makes our beautiful and creative designs really shine in our clients’ homes.
The big-box chains work from an “approved contractors” list, and while you may get lucky with a decent contractor from this list, many of their installers don’t have the experience to ensure your kitchen is installed both properly and efficiently.
If a client is considering a white or painted kitchen, then having a great installation team is even more important, as these kitchens can be particularly difficult to install. This is due to the cabinets being painted on top of maple, so they can’t be touched up easily, and nicely, if they get scratched, or if a miter cut is messed up during the installation. Think of it like your car’s finish, if there is a scrape, you can’t just paint it easily and make the scrape go away. If mistakes are made with white/painted cabinets, the end product will look terrible.
Put simply: experience matters, and it will show.
6. Good Project Management equals Good Experience
We understand that all the choices and time spent creating your perfect kitchen can be overwhelming. By taking the project management aspect of it off of our clients’ plates, they are able to focus solely on their vision of what they
7. Shopping Experience can make or Break It
Everyone has been in the position of trying to make a purchase, and something going awry. Whether it is a website not working correctly, a sales associate that doesn’t know what they are doing, or simply a long line when you’re trying to check out, it really does taint or ruin the experience. We set aside hours for our clients when we meet with them. With all of our experience comes a ton of knowledge, both with the products we supply and design with, and with how to have a successful remodel. We never want to leave a question unanswered, or a design request unexplored. Having such individualized attention really makes a difference and helps make our clients feel comfortable in their decisions.
The level of care and attention that goes into your project when you work with a boutique design house like ours is unmatched by large national chains. The kitchen is the heart of the home, let’s work together to realize the space of your dreams.
Thank you for your interest in getting a quality kitchen or bathroom, and we would love to invite you to visit our showroom at 154 Cross Rd in Waterford, CT. Here, we can show you what we are all about, and let you see and feel the quality of our products, and installations. The possibilities of what your kitchen or bathroom can be are endless, and we’d love to help you find and receive your perfect kitchen or bathroom.
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