We now have a glorious new kitchen from Leicht/German Kitchen Center, and are thrilled with the appearance and quality. We worked through the store on the Upper West Side. Petr Zahraj was our designer/ salesperson; Sam Simmonds was our project manager, and the Leicht installer was Jon (not sure of his last name).
Our considerations in SELECTING GKC included the obvious quality of the materials; the reputation of German workmanship; the almost one-stop shopping and connection with the general contractor (more on this below); and the neighborhood location (easy to meet with them). We didn't fully know what we'd end up paying -- which was a lot more than our original (admittedly vague) idea, but worth it.
We took our time with the DESIGN process, and the end result made it worth the effort. My husband worked very closely with Petr to make sure we were able to make use of every possible millimeter of space in our small galley kitchen. To his credit, Petr was very patient and did not take offense at our questions or general approach to the process. We ended up with a kitchen that feels more spacious and has more storage and workspace than we had before.
The ORDERING process went well. GKC was able to tell us in advance when the container ship would get to NYC, give or take a week. As we got closer to the date, they were able to give us the exact date.
Petr recommended Marian Kandrac (of Kandrac Construction) as a GENERAL CONTRACTOR that they worked with many times -- he described Marian as a reliable perfectionist. OK, someone we hardly knew recommended someone else we didn't know at all - but it ended up working out perfectly. Marian and his crew were phenomenal all the way through. In a period of 2 weeks, they prepared our kitchen as follows: totally gutted the room, removed 2 small walls, pushed back a wall to get more space, painted, tiled, moved existing plumbing, moved/added electrical, etc. Our building loved this crew, as they followed every building rule, every day.
There was a bit of chaos around the DELIVERY of the cabinets to our apartment. We ended up having to wait 10 extra days because it seems that the installers were not available. One of the things GKC had told us was that they would work very closely with the general contractor -- which they did. But somehow not enough in this area, and it caused us to have to spend more time/money living elsewhere. I'd call this the only glitch of substance in this entire process. The entire kitchen was still completed in 7 weeks.
INSTALLATION was amazing. Of course nothing is perfectly straight in any NYC apartment, and ours was no exception. Yet everything is perfectly aligned. Our installer, Jon, did all the installation by himself. We still can't figure out how he mounted cabinets on the wall without help, but that's what happened. He did a beautiful job.
We also bought some APPLIANCES from GKC: a Gaggenau refrigerator and Miele dishwasher. They either installed or arranged for installation of these items. We kept our existing stacked washer and dryer, which are now in a cabinet of their own. At first GKC didn't want to guarantee that our existing w/d would be steady enough to not damage the cabinet. But they ended up buying exact copies of our w/d, testing them out in the cabinet, and then agreeing that it would work. (Wow!)
We had a small PUNCH LIST at the end, but everything got taken care of in good spirits. Sam, the project manager, was very helpful in this regard.
Bottom line: Glitches were minimal, it was all worth it, and we are completely thrilled with what we have. read more