I used Dakota for my first custom cabinets which got installed about the middle of February of 2011. Yes they were late on delivery but that was because their foreman ordered the wrong base material. I was supposed to have thermally fused melamine and they gave me vinyl covered instead. So all the bases had to be remade. What that meant was that all the fronts had to be removed by them and reattached. There is risk involved in this but it was performed at no cost to us in about 2 weeks and I was stressing the whole time because our construction load was past due. My biggest complaint with the cabinets is the delivery and install. The cabinets had many minor flaws in the finish due to handling damage and the touch up work was less than satisfactory. Somebody was just too rough with them and their skill level to perform touch up was not up to par. I halfway think it was the tear down of the fronts that caused all the dings and dents and scrapes. Also, the installers evidently did not use a level on one string of my cabinets and its almost 1/4"" low on one side causing it to look very off with my oven hood installed. To late to correct now. One of their installers did not use a template to drill the cabinet knobs and some of the knobs were off by as much as 3/16"" on the level. It was very obvious with the naked eye. They had to remove the doors and fill and drill all over again. Why somebody would not use a drill template is beyond me! The man who finished my cabinets is a true artist. It's just too bad the installers and delivery people compromised his craftsmanship. Another gripe I have is that I have had to remove the larger drawers because the bottoms were pulling away from the small staples. Yes, only two weeks old and they are already dragging on the bottom because they did not glue and/or use screws to hold the bottoms in place. In fact many of the staple missed their intended location completely. What joke! Putting heavier items like Pyrex and dishes pulled out the staples already. Beware everyone, cabinets built with this type of design will not last very long without you having to fix it the right way. And to think how much money I paid for these just sickens me. And now that they are out of business, no doubt to filing Chapter 11, I have no warranty at all. In all honesty I would never use them again if they get back into business and I will not recommend them to any of my many friends. I know with all my heart that I could have built them better and installed them better but I did not have the luxury of time on my side.
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