Analysis of quality veneered doors in Ukrainian shops

What veneer doors are there in the market and what is the difference between them?

How to choose a door?

Why doors with similar appearance are different in price?

Is it worth paying more so that not to regret the money while using the door? And the most important thing what is worth the money and what is the difference between the so called “same” doors?

Every customer asks these questions and our aim is to help him.

Our customers already know the difference between natural veneer doors and doors coated with foil or with melamine paper. It is clear that the latter are cheaper due to their artificiality. But the problem is that lately all the shops have been filled with various cheap or expensive veneer doors of doubtful quality.

First of all I’d like to say that the following article doesn’t advertise our factory. This is the attitude of any manufacturer of qualitative doors who cannot accept poor quality of doors in Ukrainian markets.

Some manufacturers of interior veneer doors deliberately worsen the quality using cheaper original materials and utilities and simpler production technologies in order to decrease the price and make their items more competitive. They think that usually customers due to the lack of professional knowledge in the sphere cannot estimate the application performances of the items while buying it.

And customers often choose lower prices forgetting that misers pay twice.

The importance of this problem has increased lately due to economic crisis, when the population solvency has decreased sharply and many manufacturers have applied inadmissible to our mind measures to make the price lower.

We consider it reasonable and necessary to show you the results of interior door market analysis of quality carried out by our experts.

We thought it inadmissible to decrease the achieved and recognized doors quality of “Papa Carlo” factory and “Carlo Porte” trademark even despite the crisis, thought it has led to lower sales results; our attitude to this issue is final and fundamental.

We would like you to mind all the following information and let the customers estimate objectively all the features of the doors in sale and make the right choice between quality and price.

Now we’ll discuss the system features of non-qualitative items rather than separate casual defects possible during the manufacture of any even qualitative products which should be still eliminated.

Constructional defects:

• The application of usual bar of wood with natural unevenness instead of the re-agglutinated one without any knots and defects. This leads to door deformation.
• The application of particle board instead of solid wood. This causes not only the purchase of the substitute but also worse usage. E.g. screws holding the hinges can be torn out of the particle board by the weight of the door panel; while fixing them back is not possible.
• The absence of MDF sheet between the wood bar and the veneer. And if the panel is made of pine which contains tar, the tar may ooze to the veneer that coats bare wood. It also happens that all the places of bar agglutination are seen through the veneer. And finally cracks, ruptures and unevenness are often too.
• The application of domestic PVA glue leads to poor agglutination and consequently to deformations while using.
• No special trenches for platbands to be installed and consequently platbands are fixed with nails; so their heads and places of puttying are seen.
• The application of cheap accessories with small term of usage. Usually changing accessories yourself is very difficult.

All the abovementioned variants are considered flagrant constructional violation, borrowed from the manufacture of cheap doors coated with paper or polyvinylchloride film. But those doors are cheap and while buying them customers know beforehand that the doors are not natural.

Unfortunately one cannot always notice these defects as manufacturers may not mention such technical solutions or even hide them and offer the customers the model of qualitative door panels.

Poor finishing

• Uneven surface because of poor grinding and cheap lacquers that lead to low durability of the coat.
• Thin lacquer layer leads to uneven surface and open wood voids. They are exposed to humidity penetration in rooms with high humidity level (bathrooms, basements).
• Lacquer vanishing on the surface and on the ends, doorframe and platbands.
• Uneven coating (mottle) that proves cheap toners and methods of application for the sake of material saving. And also strong dye fading in the light during the usage.
• Different tones of the color on various parts of the door panel. The panel, doorframe and platbands vary in color because of the mass production, different time or even different manufacturers.
• Poor grinding and paining of corners, edges and platbands.
• Veneer differs in structure and color.
• Veneer spalling on the edges and corners together with puttied places.

Poor installment

• Bad adjustment of the corners and coating . Consequently the presence of drops and slots as well as different cuts of the adjusted elements.
• Slots in the places of slat and glass adjustment to the coating.
• Veneer spalling on the edges and corners because of bad adjustment, milling and application of railing.
• Absence or poor accessories cutting-in (slots, spalling wrong places).
• The application of nails for coating.
• Gaps between the door panels because of original bad adjustment (gaps between glass and coating, upright and transverse elements of the panel).
• Wrong sizes of the elements or wrong adjustment of the panel and doorframe (gaps). And so the need of extra works during the process of installment (cutting, accessories re-milling).
• Badly cut edge doorframe elements.
• Instability of door geometry (absence of diagonals, variations in width and length of the panels) that influences the visible gap between the door panel and the doorframe.

All the abovementioned faults and defects worsen not only the overall appearance but also the door usage. Having similar at the first sight appearance doors may have 1.5 times smaller price due to all mentioned technical simplifications and change of materials.

But if we remember that the term of usage is to be not less than 15-20 years, it is clear that all those effects are not economically reasonable, and the risk of door changing in 2-3 years or living with defective doors is too big.

If we take the difference in price of 700-800 UAH and recount it for 1 day of the usage, we’ll have the following:

((700-800UAH))/((15-20years)x365 days)= 10-15 kopeks/day (!!!!!).

This sum is so small in an everyday budget that any wise person if buying “for his pleasure” should prefer quality and items that will gladden his eye with perfect appearance and usage. Always remember that doors are one of the most important elements of the interior.

In conclusion I’d like to say that our main aspiration is that the manufacturers do not compete with each other on the basis of ignorance of their customers. As customers cannot always estimate all the consumer properties of the doors they buy.