Kitchens, Part 5
this indestructible marvel which is the interior of your door.
In case you missed it, he just told you that the door was made
of ground up wood scraps which are used as a filler to keep the
cost / amount of plastic resin used to make the core as small
as possible. He did not say that the core was made of
Cherry or Oak.
The salesman will show you a really bad particle board door.
That thing will have slivers of wood half an inch long and all
of them squashed together. He is doing this to show you what you
might be getting at the low end of the scale from a "Big
Box Store". He may also walk over and tap on your kitchen
cabinet doors. He will do this to discover if it is hollow or
to show you that your door looks like it is an inch thick but
is really just an eighth of an inch thick with a thick frame around
the edge.
Another part of his demonstration might include rubbing ketchup
on his sample door and showing you how easily it wipes off. If
you want to calmly destroy him, take a jar of Dijon mustard and
rub that on the door and let it stay for a minute or
so. A white plastic covered door will be permanently stained.
The salesman does not push you into one door style or another.
There is so much profit in this that it really does not matter.
Further, the more you compare and contrast and reject and select,
the more you are selling yourself on having the cabinets refaced.
The more time you take selecting the more you have sold yourself.
He will usually help you hold the doors you have selected up against your existing
cabinets so that you can see how they look. What he is really doing is letting you see
how ugly your kitchen really is and how nice it will look with new doors.
The different styles and colors of these cabinet doors cost about
the same to make. Some are styles more popular and so those may
cost more.
Usually the salesman will be straight enough to tell the homeowner not to put handles
or knobs on the new doors. Where the present homeowner wants them and the style
they want won’t be what the next owners want and might actually hurt the value of the
kitchen and thus value of the home.
The hinges used are often stainless steel, of a hidden design,
and sometimes are of good quality. They may say that these hinges
are “European.” What they mean is that they are of
“European design” and actually they can be made in
Red China. Hinges made in Austria cost about $5 each and those
made in Red China cost about fifty cents each.
The refacing job also requires covering the exterior parts of the cabinets -- hidden or
