‘We’re going to live here forever hopefully’: Retired teacher upset with cabinets, turns to Action 9

CHARLOTTE — A retired teacher says she spent thousands of dollars to have her kitchen cabinets repainted, but when the paint started coming off she tried resolving the problem with the cabinet company on her own and couldn’t, so that’s when she contacted Action 9.

Lori Pagliarini was tired of her dark brown kitchen cabinets, plus, she says the finish was coming off.

“It just looked bad to me, so we decided to paint them white,” she said.

She told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke that she did her homework. “We had three different estimates and we went with the middle of the road,” she said.

She hired CabinetSmith, who at last check, had an “A” rating with the Better Business Bureau.

Pagliarini said she paid the business “somewhere between $8,000 and $9,000.”

“It is a lot of money, but we thought it was worth it. We’re going to live here forever hopefully, and we wanted it done right,” she said.

Initially, she thought the work was done right. “They did a very nice job, but soon after, within a month or two, we noticed that they were starting to chip,” she said.

She said after a lot of phone calls, the company finally came and touched it up, but that the paint kept coming off.

“So I wanted all of the facades taken off again, sanded and repainted,” she said.

She told Stoogenke that she kept getting the runaround, so she decided to contact Action 9.

Action 9 emailed the company, which responded with a detailed explanation but asked Stoogenke not to share it publicly.

Pagliarini said the business made things right.

“It was just driving me crazy, the little chips, so we got in touch with you, and you got us somebody to help” she said.

Stoogenke offers this advice no matter what kind of contractor you hire:

- Be clear and persistent about what you need them to do.

- Make sure the contract clearly states how problems are handled.

- Try not to pay too much up front. Stoogenke suggests about a third of the total unless it’s a custom job. In that case, it is fair for a company to expect you to pay more because it may not be able to use the same materials on another project if you back out.

(Watch below: Action 9 helps homeowner get $3,700 from home warranty company)

Action 9 helps homeowner get $3,700 from home warranty company

©2022 Cox Media Group