We had two disturbing phone calls in less than two weeks, a few months ago; both of our clients complained about the same identical problem; their drawer boxes were flouring with some white powder, and if you look very, very closely you would see some tiny insects just walking all over them.{{more}} Of course, we immediately got worried and delved into all kinds of possibilities, wondering what could have caused it. When we weren’t happy with the results, we came up with, we made a few phone calls and talked to some people and we found out that we are not the only ones who’ve got the complaint.

It turns out that some manufacturers ship down their plywood here with bugs already in them, so you can’t even point a finger at the hardware stores and say that “it’s you who sold me that”, because it’s not like you can see the insects really. So the customers end up with the bad product. Fortunately, there is something that you can do to stop these bugs from eating away at your kitchen. There is a product that is called “Silignum”. The correct name was given to me by Mr. Garry Dunbar. Thanks, Dunbar. That product is sold at most hardware stores here in St. Vincent, so you see, they were prepared for it… good. All you have to do is to just get a paint brush and paint the stuff to the infected areas and that would kill all of the bugs.

Those incidents, however, forced us to re-evaluate the services offered to our customers. We’ve upgraded to include another option for the customers who do not ever want to deal with problems like that (not all plywood is infected – it is important that we stress that). We’ve never had a complaint with the reddish coloured ones or some of the pine coloured ones as well. We’ve added the option of having your drawer boxes built from the same wood as the kitchen. It’s a more expensive option, it’s not necessary, but it’s available.

We can also use MDF, but we DO NOT use it because here at Exclusive Kitchens, as our philosophy is to build a kitchen to last you almost a lifetime. MDF cannot withstand the temperature here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines for a long period of time, and if it gets wet, it shreds to pieces, but you can be assured that it does not flour, but the reward isn’t enough for the risk you take.

You can rest assured that as new technologies and new trends become available, you would be the first to know.