Tell us about the project. New countertops only, new cabinets, new house?

A picture from further back will also help so we understand the problem area.

Was a template made for the tops?

It seems the problem is with the fabricator and they would be the ones to make it right.

and it wouldn’t bother him if it was his house.

Unfortunately, that's not the kind of contractor you want working on your house.

Too often fabricators get the blame when it was the cabinet installers fault for following a crooked wall. The fabricator is put in the untenable position of insisting the cabinets be reinstalled, following the cabinets and having proper overhangs but out-of-square/plane tops, or square tops in plane with varying overhang. If that's the case here, the GC should have caught it.

With an edge profile that simple, the edges can probably be ripped, reprofiled, and polished on site to reduce the variance.

30 year old house, new cabinets, counter tops, and floors. A template was made before cutting.

More pictures that show where the depth is shorter, the overhang is shorter and vice versa. As the depth gets longer, so does the overhang.

I tend to not think it was the fabricator because it would have been an easy fix to shift blame to him instead of being upset with us and insisting it’s not a big deal. The new cabinets that were built were not level and had to be adjusted before the counter tops went in, so that is definitely a possible cause.

I'd want it fixed too.

I can see why he doesn't want to fix. I wasn't expecting to see a complete kitchen.

When did you notice the problem and notify the contractor?

I'm not making excuses for anyone, but to give you an idea how difficult doing an accurate angled cut like yours is, being off 1/2 of a degree on the angle, will make a 10' counter off 1".

It's been a long time since I installed countertops, but we always checked the overhang, and more than once, hauled a top back to the shop to recut.

I have that exact same amount of variation in my countertop overhang. Just under 1” in to about 1.75”. I hoped for better, but I also recognized that my kitchen has uneven walls, floors, etc, so I wasn’t terribly surprised. It’s been just over a year since the counters were installed and it does not bother me at all. I love my kitchen, especially my countertops! Since you already have the backsplash and countertop cabinets installed, I can’t imagine that it would be worth the risk of trying to fix it. I’m sure you paid a lot of money and expected better attention to detail, but I think this might be a “choose your battles” situation. Your kitchen is looking gorgeous!!

I agree that I would WANT it fixed. I also think that the rest of the work looks nice (seam, backsplash being in, the alignment of the cooktop cut out, etc. I would be REALLY REALLY worried that the cure would be worse than the illness.

Your kitchen is lovely - I suspect that when all the other elements are in place, and the "jewelry" is on the cabinets, and all your stuff is there - this thing that jumps out and draws YOUR eye right now will be less noticeable to you and then not noticable at all to anyone else.

It is odd that they managed to get the angle right, and the alingment to the back well and INTENTIONALLY widened the counter as it went away from the seam.

Anyway - I'd probably have a few drinks and accept it as to not worry about the damage removing and replacing it migt cause.

Hang in there - it's a really beautiful kitchen and I am sure you'll love it when it's all over.

He says that mistakes get made, no one is going to notice it, most people wouldn’t care, and it wouldn’t bother him if it was his house.

This is a laughable rationalization. Suppose you are driving through a parking lot and someone backs into your car. They are upset that they hit you and to calm them down you say, "Mistakes happen." They still have to pay to fix your car.

Mistakes do get made and when someone's mistake causes you damage, you are owed recompense. I think there is certainly a danger of the cure being worse than the disease, but that doesn't mean that you aren't due some reasonable compensation for living with the mistake.

-----

Furthermore, wavy walls and wavy floors should not be a problem with new cabinets that are properly installed. Cabinets should be installed true and level to each other, any imperfections in the wall or floor should be resolved using shims or other appropriate installation appliances so that the final result is a line of cabinets that are straight and level. This can make installation of the counter a bit more difficult on the wall side and I have seen the drywall relieved to get a good installation against wavy walls.

As for the angled cut, this is why they template rather than measure. If it is properly templated then it should be difficult to mess up. You just use a 48" T-bevel gauge. Line the shaft up with the front side of the cabinets (or the template). Line one side of the head up with the front of the perpendicular set of cabinets (or the template). Then the complimentary side of the head will be the exact angle of the cut and it will be a lot more exact than 1 degree.

This is a mistake, whether it is a cabinet installer mistake or a fabricator mistake doesn't really matter if you have a GC... because figuring out who made the mistake is their job.

---

Again, not having this corrected seems reasonable if everything else is OK. However, you are being asked to accept a mistake because the risk/cost of correcting it is significant then you should be compensated for accepting the mistake in some other way, either with a discount or credit for other work.

Once it's fully installed, and then locked under to the counter cabinets, and the backsplash, it's too late for "fixes". This is a "complain about it 2 months ago when it arrived on site" type of issue. Like trying to complain about a wave in the paint on your entry wall, that was caused by the uneven drywall application that was caused by the bow in the wall from uneven lumber that was used. You have to go back three generations and start over.

It is not too late for fixes. This is a consistent and erroneous position on this forum. If this were accurate any problem could be avoided by hiding it from the consumer.

in reality the contractor turned one mistake into two bigger mistakes and is on the hook for both mistakes.

1. The countertop/cabinet installation wasn’t done correctly.

2. The contractor failed to ensure the work was done correctly before allowing additional work.

Both of these things are the contractor’s problem. However, there is a chasm between being right and being whole. So it may not be worth the battle/trouble to repair the problem, but if anything I would expect more compensation for the contractor’s additional mistake because that mistake drastically increased his cost to correct the problem.

I would bet that having the angle in your kitchen is what caused some of the issues. The angled seam is rarely cut perfectly at the shop, so they usually adjust on site. As they cut/grind the seam to adjust the angle, you skew the whole length of the slab and will end up with slightly different projection from one end to the other.

Thank you everyone for your comments. To answer some comments/questions, I noticed this immediately as soon as the countertops were uncovered and am not complaining two months later. We have actually renovated a kitchen in a home older than this one with an angled countertop that was the same layout as this one. The counter tops were cut to a standard overhang. The difference it seems in this kitchen is that our contractor for that home made sure the cabinets were level before having counter top templates made.

The counter top fabricator has offered to fix it. I am worried that as some pointed out the fix isn‘t worth the cure. Mostly, I wanted to gauge that we weren’t being crazy to be disappointed in this outcome especially since we basically had the same situation previously. (And before anyone comments why didn’t we go with our previous contractor-it was in a different state, so that wasn’t really an option.)

Let him fix it. With that edge profile, it's not that big a deal.

@Megan Favre Coming back to this thread from last year, how did it go with your countertops? Did you end up getting them fixed? Did they have to take everything out and redo them entirely, or did they fix them in placed?

Are you glad you had it done, or did it cause more issues to the rest of the kitchen cabinets, walls, etc?

Thanks!