Craftsmanship, trust, communication, and reliability– these work and service qualities are hard to come by when doing any type of renovation. It’s especially rare to find all these qualities in one business. Dean Cabinetry and Kevin’s remarkable team embody all these qualities and were, hands down, the best part of our renovation experience this year. Finding people you can trust is difficult. It’s also challenging to find a company you can trust to keep on budget when you really need to stick to it. I’m also a firm believer that praise is for those who go above and beyond what they are asked to do and not for those who just get it done.Design & Planning:It’s easy to get lost in the many cabinet brands and styles offered in Dean’s showroom in Bolton. Since our budget didn’t allow us to do custom kitchen cabinets, we wanted a brand and style that was known for its stock’s quality and style at a price we could afford. Paul, Designer at Dean Cab, helped us decide on stock cabinets from Fabuwood. Galaxy is Fabuwood’s Shaker-style version which we chose in their new Indigo (dark blue) color for our kitchen island and Frost (white) for our wall cabinets and semi-custom pantry. Paul was great. There was no upselling or trying to get us to add on and upgrade to fancier or more expensive items. He understood what we wanted to achieve in our kitchen renovation and helped us design and plan a wonderful layout. This was not an easy task because our kitchen has 3 large windows, 2 interior door openings, and an exterior door which didn’t leave much space for wall cabinets. We also got our cabinets faster than we had expected.Installation:Mike handled the installation. My wife and I have done many renovations over the past twenty years, including a historic rehabilitation of a 7,000 sq. ft. Federal style home (c. 1832), and know that Mike is that rare, dedicated craftsman who takes real pride in his work. He drove several hours (sometimes 3-1/2 hours with traffic) to our house and worked diligently and skillfully to assemble all the cabinet pieces together. He had a critical eye and quickly noted some cabinet items that he thought did not meet their standards and therefore needed to be replaced. Dean Cabinetry installed those replacements in no time. He and Paul also worked together to help resolve on-site challenges. One time, I gave Mike some last-minute punch list items I wanted to be completed the next time he came back. Instead of waiting until the next time he was scheduled to come back to our house, Mike stayed late and made sure every single one of my concerns was resolved before he went home.Summary:From design, planning, installation, and coming back several times to get the job done, Kevin and his team really went above and beyond our expectations. We worked with an array of contractors and subcontractors during our renovation. I’m not sure if it’s the COVID era or inflation that made our experiences with many of them disappointing and, with a few, a real nightmare. It’s expensive to do a kitchen reno or any type of reno these days with price gauging and sloppy work more a common experience than not. It seems we were really lucky to find Dean Cabinetry.(Photos coming soon.)