The Cabinets Arrived Damaged, Short, or Wrong

Sign last, after you have looked

The delivery receipt is the one document everyone will ask for later. Whatever you sign without comment reads as “arrived in good condition”, so the order of events at the kerb is: count, look, write, photograph, sign.

1. Count the cartons against the packing listNot the cabinets — the cartons. A single base cabinet can be two or three boxes (the carcass, the doors, a drawer kit), and long parts such as fillers, end panels and toe kick often travel in their own slim cartons. If the count is short, say so on the receipt.
2. Walk round the pallet before it comes off the truck if you canLook at every face you can see: crushed corners, punctures, a carton that has been opened and re-taped, wet patches, a stack that has slumped to one side. Forks leave a very particular wound — two parallel slots low on one side — and it is worth looking for.The tellA carton that rattles when you tilt it, or one with a dent you can push your fist into, is the one to open first.
3. Write what you see, specifically“Damaged” is too vague to be useful. “Two cartons crushed at one corner, one punctured on the long side, contents not yet inspected” is what helps later. Writing “subject to inspection” on its own rarely carries weight; a description does.
4. Photograph it as it arrivedThe whole pallet from each side, then each damaged carton close up with its label in the frame. Take the pictures before anything is moved, with the truck or the driver in the background if you can. A date on the photo does the rest.
5. Then signYou have recorded what you can see. What you cannot see yet is what the next hour is for.

Unbox everything the day it lands

Not the morning you plan to install. Damage you find three weeks later is hard to pin on anyone, and a missing part found on install day stops the job with the old kitchen already in the skip. Clear a dry floor, open the cartons one at a time, and work through each one before you open the next, so parts never wander between boxes.

• The label against the order. Every carton carries the cabinet code — B18, SB36, W3030 and so on. Tick each one off against your order and your plan. A code on the label that is not on your order is the first thing to report. How to read the codes.
• The colour and the style. Open each door carton far enough to see a face. A door in the wrong colour, or a Shaker profile where you ordered flat, is easiest to sort before anything is built.
• The panel count. The parts list in the carton names every panel: sides, bottom, back, rails, shelves. Lay them out and count. A panel can hide flat against the carton wall.
• The hardware bag. Every box has one, and what is in it depends on how the box is built — more on that below. Check it is there; do not empty it into a common pile.
• The faces, under a raking light. Hold a torch low across each door and end panel. Dents, scratches and chips that vanish under a ceiling light jump out when the light skims the surface.
• The edges. Run a finger along the edge banding on doors and front edges. It should be tight and continuous, with no lifting at the corners and no swelling underneath.
• The drilled holes. The rows of small holes up the inside of each side panel, the hinge cups in the doors, the runner holes for drawers. They should be clean, in line, and on the side they belong. Machining that is missing, mirrored or plainly in the wrong place is not something to work around.

Keep every carton and every piece of packing until the job is finished and every report is closed. A damaged part goes back in its own carton with its label, exactly as it came.

Damage you can live with, and damage you can’t

A kitchen hides a great deal of every cabinet. Before you decide a scratch is the end of the world, work out where that face will end up.

• Usually hidden. The outside of a side panel that will sit against the next cabinet, the back panel, the underside of the bottom, the back edges against the wall, the top rails under the countertop. A scuff there is a cosmetic call you can make yourself — record it anyway.
• Always on show. Door and drawer faces, their edges, finished end panels, the exposed side of the last cabinet in a run, and the front edges of the box itself. On a frameless cabinet the ¾″ front edge of each panel shows in the gap between doors, so a chip there is visible every day.
• Structural, whatever the looks. A crack through a panel, a chip that takes out a drilled hole, a corner broken where a joint goes, a bent drawer runner. These parts hold the box together or carry a door; they are not cosmetic, and they are not to be built.

Doors deserve their own look. A door has a show face and a back face, and on a full-overlay frameless door the back face is visible every time the cabinet is open. A scratch on the back of a pantry door you open twenty times a day is not hidden. A mark on the back of a door that will sit behind the fridge panel probably is.

If you decide to use a part with a hidden scuff, it is your decision to make — just make it with the photos taken and the report sent, so nobody wonders later.

Don’t build the damaged panel

It is tempting to build around a chip and get on with it. Resist. Once a panel is screwed into a box, three things change. Nobody can see the damage as it arrived any more, only as it is now. Assembly loads the panel, so a hairline crack can open up or a chipped edge can crumble further. And the written warranty excludes damage that happens before or during installation — a part you knowingly built in is very hard to argue about later. The warranty terms are here.

Found it halfway through a build? It happens: a hole that isn’t where the screw wants to go, a panel that chips as the first screw goes in, a crack that only shows once the board is under load. Stop at that point. Don’t force the screw, don’t drill a new hole and don’t finish the box “to see”. Photograph the part where it is, with the box around it, then back the screws out and photograph it again on its own. A defect found during assembly is still a defect, and it is much easier to show when the evidence hasn’t been built over.

The same goes for a part that looks right but won’t go together: a cam that won’t pull a plywood joint tight, a dowel hole drilled too shallow, a runner that sits proud of its neighbour. Check the parts list and the orientation once — a panel the wrong way round is the usual cause, and the assembly page shows how to spot it — and if it still won’t, treat it as a defect and report it.

So: set the damaged part aside in its carton with its label, report it, and build the rest. Every other box in the kitchen can be assembled while you wait. A replacement panel also goes into an unbuilt box far more easily than it replaces one inside a built cabinet.

What to send, so it is sorted in one message

Damage and shortages go to your Flip Kitchen sales rep — the person who took the order — or through the contact page if you are not sure who that is. One complete message moves faster than five partial ones. Put in it:

1. The order numberAnd your name as it is on the order.
2. The cabinet code and a photo of the carton labelThe label ties the part to the order. Without it, “the second base on the left” means nothing to anyone but you.
3. Photos of the carton and the partThe carton from the outside showing any damage, then the part on its own: one wide shot so the panel can be identified, one close-up with a tape measure in the frame for scale.
4. The name of the panelFrom the parts list in the carton — left side, bottom, door, drawer front.
5. Whether the carton was damagedAnd a copy or a photo of the delivery receipt with your note on it.

For transit damage, the same photos and the receipt are what the carrier will want. Ask the carrier what they need and by when, as soon as you find it — carriers generally expect damage to be raised quickly, and the clock started when you signed.

Before you report it missing, look in three places

Most “missing” parts turn up. Before you send the message, check:

• Inside other cartons. Hardware bags get taped inside the carcass carton, tucked into a drawer box or wedged between panels. Shelves sometimes travel in a different carton from their cabinet.
• In their own cartons. Doors, drawer fronts, fillers, end panels and toe kick are often packed separately from the boxes they belong to. Check the packing list for long, slim cartons.
• On the parts list. Sometimes the part is there under a different name than you expected. Lay out the contents against the list in the carton, item by item.

What is in each hardware bag depends on how the box is built. Plywood boxes go together with cam locks and dowels; particleboard boxes are screwed together, so their bag holds the assembly screws instead. If you have both kinds in one kitchen, keep each bag with its own box.

Wrong size, wrong colour, wrong hand

Before you call a cabinet wrong, put three documents side by side: the label on the carton, your order, and your plan. They tell you which kind of wrong it is.

• The label doesn’t match the order. It was packed wrong. Report it with a photo of the label, and leave the box unopened if you can.
• The label matches the order, but not the plan. The order was wrong — a W3030 where the plan said W3036, say. Talk to your sales rep about it before you open or build that box; what can be done depends on the part, so keep it in its carton.
• The door opens the wrong way. Often not a wrong cabinet at all. A single door’s hinge cups are bored on one edge, so the door turns over to hinge from the other side — that works when the door looks the same both ways up, and not when it has a grain direction or a shaped detail. The fix is in the Q&A.

If the plan was the problem all along, check the replacement on the plan before you order it. The free planner shows what fits the gap, including the filler you will need, before anything else is shipped. When the run doesn’t fit the wall covers the arithmetic.

Store it properly, and keep installing around the gap

A replacement takes time to arrive. Three things keep that from becoming a second problem.

1. Store the rest dry, flat and indoorsLay flat cartons on a level surface off the concrete, not leaning against a wall where they will bow. Keep them out of any room being drywalled, painted or tiled, away from exterior walls in a cold snap, and leave the doors packed until you hang them. Particleboard and melamine edges take on moisture in a damp basement or a cold garage, and then they swell.
2. Install the run, and leave the gap exactA missing box in the middle of a run need not stop the job: hang and join everything else, and leave the opening to the replacement’s real width, checked with a tape at the top and the bottom.The exceptionThe corner cabinet. Every run is measured from it, so if the corner box is the one missing, wait for it rather than guessing.
3. Hold the countertopDon’t book the template visit until every box is in, levelled and joined. The fabricator measures the cabinets as they stand, and a gap where a cabinet will be is a guess they won’t make. What they check on template day.