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How did we chip the AGA Door?
We accidentally chipped the AGA door whilst cleaning - the first and hopefully the last time it will ever happen. We used to take off all the AGA doors at the start of the job and to save space some of my operatives who worked for me would stack them on top of each other. One of the doors fell off of the stack and chipped on the floor. It just fell a couple of inches. But the enamel chips really easily on the hinges of the AGA door.
If you are a professional AGA cleaner don't stack the doors!
I now train everyone, so new employees and franchisees, to take each door off one at a time, clean it, and then put it back on after the door is cleaned to avoid any risk of damage.
What Was The Cost To Repair The Chip On The AGA Door?
Well apparently the cream enamel colour of an AGA has thousands of variations according to our local AGA re-enameller - some 35,000 plus colour variations on the cream colour alone. The AGA enamelling company quoted me £350 to just get the colour matched and of course the re-enamelling would have been on top of this - also quoted at £350.
However they suggested another solution. Because the door was for the bottom left of a 4 oven AGA and the temperature in that oven is relatively cool they suggested going to an auto paint specialist. So I got paint colour matched to the door and did the repair myself. The paint cost me £15 but there was also the time to get a replacement door (loaned to me by a local AGA spares supplier - it was an hour's drive away) to put on the AGA whilst I had the door for repair, the time it took me to do the repair, and the time to take both of the doors back.
The customer was very happy.
A note and an update in March 2021
Just as an update. We cleaned an AGA with module in 2019. One of my employees in Bristol cleaned it. After the clean the customer brought to our attention a big chip on the top of one of the AGA Module doors. To me to create such a chip - 10 cm long - would have required a lot of effort and force. So i was pretty sure that we didn't do it. However for whatever reason our employee had failed to take photos that showed the door in full with (or without) the chip so we could confirm whether the the chip was there at the start of the job. As the customer had just moved into the house I looked at the house details online, but I still couldn't get a proper picture of the AGA door.
The Cost Of AGA Enamelling Doors Is Expensive!
So I decided to get the door repaired. I took it to another AGA enamelling company (not the one above). They actually got the colour wrong when they were trying to match the colour for me and they told me that to mix that one bucket of enamel had cost them £450. They did the colour match for a second time and got it right the second time. As they had another door of the same colour to re-enamel at the same time they charged me £100 which was the price they had quoted me. The was a certain inconvenience to the customer as this time I just took the door away, and the enamelling company took three weeks to do the work. As the chip was on the module door they could still use the AGA for cooking. But the enamelling company did an excellent job; you couldn't tell that the door had been re-enamelled as it matched the colour of the rest of the AGA exactly. But I think they were overly lenient on the pricing. This enamelling company went out of business a month later.
For an enamel chip on an AGA door expect to pay a lot of money to get it repaired.
AGA Door Enamel Chip Repair (Photo credit: GrahamRogersOnline)
AGA Door Enamel Chip Repair (Photo credit: GrahamRogersOnline)
