I recently received a bid request for a project and the contractor whom I have worked for in the past is asking for "any warranty documentation for the products supplied by you for this particular project (if applicable)".

In 12 years I have never really been asked about a warranty on my cabinets. I have always just handled issues if they come up. My question is what are you offering as a warranty, how are you wording it.

Has it been commercial work, or a mix, in the past? Or is the contractor now bidding on larger commercial work? We are routinely asked for, and supply, warranty, use and maintenance guides, etc.. As far as a warranty goes you can put together something pretty straight forward with regards to a workmanship warranty and a component/hardware warranty (that will default to how long your drawer slide/hinge/hardware warranty will run). Typically they are worded where you will warranty workmanship on your end for X-XX number of years, hardware replaced under manufacturers warranty will be supplied not covering labor, etc..

Use/Care guides are a good CYA in the rare event someone thinks cleaning your cabinets with a brillo pad or gasoline is acceptable because no one told them not to.

We deal with this mostly in commercial work but we do feed a few kitchen shops that primarily pull all their cabinetry from very large manufacturers and they use the warranty as a major selling point to customers.

I cant fathom a warranty failure on anything we build other than a finish or hardware issue.

Sorry I didn't think to mention this is residential. The job is a duplex and I assume going to be a build then sell type of deal.

All the same still pretty much applies. A simple quality and workmanship clause for your end, hardware is warrantied for the term of the hardware manufacturer with replacement only (no labor to swap) for their term (usually 1 year). And go on with it.

Your quality and workmanship (perhaps other than a finish issue) should likely never be an issue so throwing 10 years on that would likely be of no issue. Hardware defaults to the supplier (though you will have to be the middle man) and is supply only.

PS, with that being pretty much what all the big boys supply, you can see how offering a 10 year or 20 year warranty is pretty easy. Likely no carcass, drawer, door, is ever going to fall apart due to lack of craftsmanship.. thats your 10-20 years. Slides, hinges, hardware, fall back on the manufacturer but you will be in the middle supplying replacements. (you choose to use crap slides/hinges/hardware you'll ship a lot of replacements and fight with manufacturer on your end.)

A general one year warranty is attached, I also go on websites for the products, the manufacturer will post a pdf of the MFG warranty, make a file and save them for future use. substrates, all hardware hinges, slides laminates etc. i have attached some for FYI

Click the link below to download the file included with this post.

USC_WARRANTY.pdf


Click the link below to download the file included with this post.

Corian_Commercial_Warranty.pdf


Click the link below to download the file included with this post.

Wilson_art_hp_laminate_warranty.pdf

Thanks James, that is helpful.

We used various wording in our warranty for a while. We had some issues, not with our product but with customer abuse. We finally hired an attorney to write our warranty, our bid quote forms, and proposal forms. He did a great job and covered items we never would have thought about. I am a woodworker and know what I do and what is good and what is not. I do not know all the ins and outs of the law when it comes to product liability. With the way the world has changed in the last 40 years ( like when you burn yourself because the coffee was too hot and earn a million) I would not want to write any contract, warranty or proposal without an attorney in my corner. They have studied the law and know what you need. Money well spent...hire an attorny.

My warranty is for 1 year, to the original purchaser, non transferable. Some products/manufacturers I use have extended warranty periods (solid surface 10 yrs) I will supply those extended warranty if ask for them, however if there is an issue then you have to deal with that manufacturer and not me. Warranty issues can be time consuming and cost you some money. You have to look at the customer and figure if you are going to get more work out of them or a ding to your reputation as to wether you will deal with an issue out of warranty. It is also an issue of what is right and wrong as well. On bigger commercial jobs I found that I lot of facility mangers were using us as maintance men on their buildings, so what I would do was list what was warranty issues and what was not, then send them a hefty bill for what was not under warranty. Of course that bill would never ever get paid (nor did I expect it to) but I would never hear from them again. I have done this quite a few times over the years.

I had one job we bid along time ago that had about 40 custom made interior doors, to match the original doors. The building is on the Historical Registry. Well the arch. spec'd out a lifetime guaranty on these doors . Due to the qualifications for this project there were not many millwork firms that could even bid on this project. I told my GC that I was not interested in bidding on these doors and deleted them from my quote. They insisted that I included them. So what I did was double the orginal price of those doors and told them that I would ship them 40 doors and 40 duplicates, so that if the orginal door failed in any way they would have a "warranty" door. My warranty was to replace the orginal door, and any replacement door came with no warranty. There was no way I was going to have someone come back at me 20 years latter and tell me I had to replace doors under warranty. Needless to say I did not get the contract on those doors, but I did get the rest of the job.