OOh very pretty!!!! I'll tell you what worked for me. I went to a granite yard, looked around and asked them who they recommended as a fabricator. I should have seen the answer coming when the owner told me, "Well, we have a lot of guys who are all very good," and shoved a dozen or so cards at me. I pushed him a little and realized he wasn't going to recommend anyone because he had a business relationship with all of them and didn't want to be seen as playing favorites. So I went up there 3 or 4 more times, always made myself very visible and always chatted with the owner a bit. After we built a bit of a relationship, I finally got him to divulge the name of the place he really liked, who did the owner's home... And they did a fantastic job!

Joseph, I disagree. I used to manage a high-end glass company and bidding/quoting was expected and our chance to make our best impression. It's not all about money and we were hardly ever the lowest price but we always worked hard to be the most professional, on time, courteous and knowledgable. Those who were looking for the lowest price went elsewhere and that was just fine. I use that same approach when looking for a KD. We gave Home Depot and two other companies (both came highly recommended) a chance. HD completely missed the mark as far as listening to what we had in mind so they were out as of the first round of drawings (we didn't even get to $). The KD from one company never came out to the house. We had an initial appointment using our measurements to go over our space and a couple of ideas. We had two further appointments and while she did a good job, she was a bit slow in returning calls/emails and we were left with a feeling of being totally on our own for measurements and possible red flags. She was a good KD but works rather exclusively with GCs ~ good to know when you're a DIYr. The third KD was responsive, came out to our house, measured, and thought outside of the box. She certainly wasn't the least expensive but we went with her because of her professionalism, the confidence she instilled in her company including after the sale and her ability to work within our budget and skill level. In the end, we ordered a kitchen that is comparable in price to the other KD but with the service that we require. If a fabricator isn't willing to give an estimate, I have to assume that they either are too busy, unorganized or short handed. I never would have thought that they might be offended but if that is the case then we wouldn't be a good fit either. Fortunately, I have quite a few choices.

GreenDesigns: this was not a "budget guy". In fact, this is a large professional outfit with 5 star reviews on Houzz and a portfolio of large, luxe kitchen projects-- this is precisely why I'm upset with the quality. My project may be smaller than others they do, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't get the same level of quality. And although my photos are closeups, I can see these issues from 3' back, thank you. Hope you are more helpful with your clients. Joseph Corlett LLC: wow! Are homeowners supposed to hide their head in the sand and just pay up? What a horrible attitude to have of clients. I'm proud to care about craftsmanship and hoping any self-respecting company would feel the same. Debbi Washburn and others with helpful comments and feedback: thank you! I was looking for constructive opinions and insights, so thank you for taking the time to provide me with them. Update (if anyone cares): I spoke with the countertop fabricators directly (my contractor let them know the issues first). They will be sending out an installation manager to review. I will be happy to at least have the conversation with them in person. If something can be done to even out the wavy edges, that would help. If nothing can be done, then it's not the end of the world and I'll still love my new kitchen, but I have to at least try. For those who mentioned cabinets, photo 2 is of a "dead" corner (on the right) with drawers to its left and a skinny door to its right (next to stove.) Not sure if that should have been resolved differently, but that's how it is. I also called cabinet fabricators and they are sending someone out to fine tune drawer and door spacing.

Here are a some pics and my dilemma. Keep in mind this is my old fridge...new one comes today! Here is how we ended up with this: I have never had an enclosed fridge so didn't think about the peninsula dying into panels or how deep panels were going to be. I "semi" designed the new footprint and took it to Lowe's where the KD took over. (yes---I know......) Bought Schuler plywood with maple fronts cabinets. Although the kitchen designer had the model number of the fridge we were buying, which is a full-size, she designed the kitchen with 24" deep panels. She knew I was trying to have the look of an enclosed fridge. Being that I've never had an enclosed fridge, it was something I just didn't think of until the install started. Evidently she put a counter-depth in the design program because the elevation sketches she gave me showed an enclosed fridge. "Luckily" the panels actually came in wrong and were cut at only 23" for some strange reason and the installer caught it right away when looking over everything. Otherwise he probably would have installed them and I would be stuck. So called Lowe's to reorder the panels and somehow in all this it suddenly dawned on me that a full size fridge was going to be deeper and require deeper panels. I thought "no problem! Yay I can order them at 30!" By this time the KD had quit her job due to the pandemic. The other KD didn't know what was going on so we called in the Schuler rep. She was the one who immediately told me that those 30" panels would be sticking out in front of the peninsula. She asked if we could move the peninsula forward since the other side is an overhang for seating, but we couldn't since it would bottleneck the entrance into the kitchen down to under 36" and getting rid of an existing bottleneck was one of the reasons for the re-design to start with. So we had a dilemma. We cannot go down to a counter depth fridge which was the other option. What I decided was to split the difference and order 27" refrigerator panels. The fridge without doors is 29.5" so I will have about 3" of the side of the fridge sticking out which I don't like, but while I want my kitchen to look beautiful, I value the functionality too. The old fridge that you see in the pic sticks out a total of 32" The new fridge will stick out 34 with doors but without handles (4.5" of that is doors that would stick out anyway) Here's the really complicated part....we will be installing decorative panels on the end of the fridge as we have them on all the cabinets. This is how you enter the kitchen and I don't want that big blank space there next to the peninsula. The panels should be installed with just 1/4" reveal. I posted a photo below of how the panels look that are already installed on the side of the pantry that adjoins to a 17" high window seat. Luckily those face the opposite way from the fridge panels so you will never see both at the same time. I also posted photos of us holding up panels on the side of the fridge (they are NOT the right size panels...we have to order those still---we just used these to look at the right edge as to how wide to make the panels.) Also keep in mind we can remove the quartz backsplash piece if that would look better. That was not originally planned...the panels were going to sit directly on top of the countertop. So do we order the panels with just the 1/4" reveal to match the panels in the rest of the kitchen? Or, as the Schuler rep recommended, order the panels so they are the same width with the countertop, leaving about 1 3/4" reveal on the right side, but then your eye follows the countertop all the way up. I asked the countertop templater guy if I should just lengthen the overhang on the kitchen side of the peninsula to 2.5" to bring it out to within 1/4" of the fridge panel but he said no....I'm now thinking I should have insisted on it. Especially since we have full overlay cabinets that already make the overlay look very small since the 1.5" planned overhang is measured from the box, not the front of the drawers. Note how small the overhang looks to the drawers. And then of course, they had templated for a 1.5" overhang and I only got 1.25" UGH! Every quarter inch there would have made the reveal on the side of the fridge less. Suggestions appreciated! I'm hoping that I will eventually make peace in my mind with this issue and won't notice it but it is driving me crazy right now. I think of all the things that screwed up just because of this one error by the KD that I didn't catch and I am beating myself up for it!