A devastated mum claims her B&Q kitchen ‘collapsed’, destroying her beloved £4,000 limited edition Emma Bridgewater crockery collection and leaving her oven ‘in pieces’.
Maria Kimble says she woke up to an explosion to discover that two kitchen pantry cabinets had moved away from the wall, taking the oven, microwave and more than 100 plates and bowls with them. The 46-year-old and her husband installed the units in their kitchen 14 months ago and were both devastated to find many sentimental and beloved items destroyed.
The mother of three lost six plates, 20 dinner plates, 10 cereal bowls, a half-dozen sandwich plates, serving bowls, egg cups and more, almost all limited edition. British pottery maker Emma Bridgewater in Stoke-on-Trent makes all her earthenware pottery using traditional techniques, with decorations often applied by hand using a sponge and brush.
Photos show her two £100 B&Q GoodHome Cumin Pantry Cupboards collapsed and shattered, with electrical connections ripped out of the wall and everything inside smashed. The stay-at-home mom was devastated to lose a beloved set of purple dahlia flowers gifted from her husband and a blue lobster plate bought for her son in memory of a childhood pet crayfish.
Maria, a full-time carer for her autistic daughter, felt ‘numb’ when she saw the limited edition crockery her daughter was eating in pieces on the floor. B&Q said they were sorry to hear about the incident and wanted to instruct the independent Furniture and Home Improvement Ombudsman to carry out an investigation at the company’s own expense.
Maria, from Gosport, Hampshire, said: “It was a Saturday morning and we heard an explosion at six o’clock. “It was really windy that night so I thought one of the kitchen windows had been blown out.
“My husband came downstairs and said, ‘You’d better come down here.’ It looked like someone had grabbed the kitchen units and pulled them off the wall. All the power had gone out.”
“Most of my plates were shattered on the floor. It was a seven-year-old collection. I felt numb when I saw them shattered on the floor. I thought, ‘Oh my God, they’re all gone.’
“Some of the dinner plates my husband got me as a gift from Liberty were purple dahlias. This meant a lot to me because I grow dahlias and display dahlias. My husband was feeling miserable, too.
“They’re emotional. The whole thing is kind of tragic. We bought my son a blue lobster plate because he had a pet blue crayfish when he was little, so it was in memory of him.”
“My daughter has her own Emma Bridgewater model so she knew it was hers and no one else would use it but now you can’t have it. It’s all really personal. My beloved tomato plate smashed and I was absolutely devastated. There’s no way you can get these, I’ve tried everywhere .”
Maria and her husband filled seven bags with kitchen scraps in their lifetime and were left with nothing to cook with for two weeks because the oven was ‘on the floor in pieces’. Maria claims that after inspecting the kitchen parts they discovered that the chipboards in both pantry units had ‘smashed’, which she believes caused them to collapse.
The cabinet is advertised online as having a 25-year warranty, but Maria claims B&Q has not responded to her complaint. Maria said: “It was a big clean up job, the oven was in pieces on the floor.
“My husband had installed all the kitchen pieces in the garden and the chipboard looked really poor quality. It was splintered, broken and pulled off the wall.
“All our electricity was failing. The cabinet doors were also shattered due to the power of the oven and the cabinet.”
Maria has now refitted her kitchen with a pantry unit and a small base unit from Ikea which she converted into a tea making station. She was only able to replace two of the limited edition 100 damaged items, but she hopes to browse more items in the future to expand her plate collection and even bought a decanter from Emma Bridgewater.
Maria said: “There’s my kettle and a few items. It’s not finished yet, I still need to put my cupboard doors on. Emma Bridgewater sent me a beautiful jug with writing on it.”
“It’s a jug with a pink heart and it says ‘you’ll get by while there are clouds in the sky’ which is really nice. Now I’m hoping to build up my collection over time. They have new collections throughout the year so I’ll see what summer brings.”
A spokesperson for B&Q said: “Please extend our apologies to Ms Kimble, we are very sorry to hear that the unit has collapsed causing the loss of the Emma Bridgewater crockery collection. However, we have checked our records based on the information you have provided. We have been unable to find any record of Ms Kimble’s communications with our Customer Services team .
“We are sure you will appreciate that it is not possible to determine the cause of the problem based on the photographs provided, so we would like to instruct an independent expert from the Furniture and Home Improvement Ombudsman to visit, at our expense, at Ms Kimble’s property at a mutually agreeable date and on the clock, performing a thorough inspection of the unit etc. and providing us with an expert opinion on what is causing the problems it is experiencing.
“Once the visit has taken place, we will be presented with a report detailing its findings and we will be in a position to take the matter further.”