May and June: Ordering the Bits and Pieces
When we placed the cabinet order at the first of April, the initial estimate for the delivery was the 15th of August and so we started working the rest of the schedule to that. During May, we purchased stools for the island, lighting for the island, hardware for all the cabinets, and a new high-arch faucet for the new sink to ensure that we can clean our largest stock pot in the new deep single-bay sink. I also got a quote from the local glass company for the two shelves that will float on the wall above the new bar, between the twin frosted glass-fronted wall cabinets.
In mid-June, we started working with a countertop company to select the two different stone colors for the kitchen and tile for the backsplash. We ended up with an off-white marble looking manufactured quartz product for the bar top and kitchen counters. And even though we originally planned to put quartz on the island, serendipity intervened. Out behind the showroom, we spotted a decidedly unique granite slab for the island top. It is largely black granite with a fair amount of white quartz veining along with hundreds of small red garnets all over. It is a show piece fitting of being the kitchen focal point. We bought it on sight.
 |
| The New Island Slab |
 |
| Close-Up of Garnet Inclusions |
 |
| Quartz Pattern for Bar and Kitchen Counters |
At the same time, Ann selected an off-white subway tile for the backsplashes. Our rep at the countertop company told us that because of their schedule and general labor shortages that they would not be able to install the backsplash tile in our time frame. Not really a problem: either I or the contractor will install the tile.
In early July, I designed the cocktail table base using square steel tubing and hired a local craftsman at a steel shop to fabricate it for us. In designing the cocktail table, I also fleshed out the design for the seating area of the island so that I could get the steel shop to cut some flat steel to support the granite in the seating area where there are no cabinet bases to support the stone. That side of the island is a bit tricky in that an open 7-foot span has to be engineered to support its share of a potentially 800-pound slab of granite.
By mid-July, I had a pretty good idea of the finish carpentry for the island (though I would refine it a couple of times during some sleepless nights) and a definite plan for building the floating shelves to the left of the oven. I placed the steel order right away, not knowing what the backlog would be. We were promised product in a week to ten days, a date that would slip, but not badly.
Although Ann selected a new sink back in April, we finally got around to ordering it in mid-July, not really wanting to store a sink for the summer. But with all the supply chain interruptions these days and given that our sink cabinet was ordered to fit a particular sink model, it seemed smarter to store it than to depend on just-in-time delivery. It arrived at the house within a week of our ordering it. Finally, something in our schedule went without a hitch.
Ann had very specific desires for sink style and color: apron-front, single bay, and dark colored. I just wanted a sink in which to wash dishes efficiently, that is, a sink big and deep enough for large pots. Style and color, I left to Ann as that is her bailiwick and forte.
July: Cabinet Snafu Threatens Entire Schedule
At the first of July, the cabinet company moved our original delivery date back by three weeks, amusing no one, with the new delivery set for early September. They told us that availability of rail cars and/or shipping containers was the primary issue. We moved the contractor dates and countertop templating and installation dates accordingly.
But then two weeks later in mid-July, we started getting more texts from the cabinet company, the gist of which was that our order (but a different order number) would be delivered just before Christmas. WTF!!?!!?
Several phone calls to the cabinet company assured me that our order was still set for delivery in early September, but there was another order just submitted which would not be completed until December. After several more phone calls, I discovered that our order from the big box store was divided into two orders for the cabinet company, one for each of the two differing stains and the second order, the one for the gray island and bar cabinets, was just submitted.
After a lot of "it's not my job" responses, I finally got to someone at the cabinet company that could expedite our second order and got it into manufacturing in 48 hours. Really, that was a fantastic response on the part of the cabinet company! Then we started the wild goose chase to see when we could get it delivered (and secondarily, why in the name of all that is reasonable we ended up in this situation).
After going around and around and around, we finally discovered that we needed to get the cabinet manufacturer's sales rep for our box store and the designer at the box store involved to expedite shipping. After the manufacturer's sales rep failed to call us back, we went to the box store to confront the designer and speed things up. He was out ill. We got another designer involved and also escalated to the special order manager at the store, who was ultimately responsible for our order.
After all this time chasing things down, we were at the end of the first week of August and our second order was due out of manufacturing on the 16th. To expedite shipping to us, we needed the cabinet manufacturer to not load our order onto a container for the slow moving train and ship it by LTL freight carrier. The manufacturer would not do this without an exorbitant payment from us, because "we changed the order."
Going further around and around and having the big box manager get involved with the manufacturer led us to discover that our cabinet order was indeed two separate orders for the two different stain colors. The manager also told us that, indeed, someone had changed the order for the bar and island cabinets. At this point all Ann or I knew for certain it was neither of us who changed the order.
The box store manager looked into the issue and days later finally concluded that the designer made a mistake in the initial order, specifying the wrong door style for the bar and island cabinets. He caught the mistake (thankfully) and submitted the change, but failed to let us know so that we could adjust our schedule. Mistakes happen; we all make them. And better to catch a mistake before manufacturing. But, not keeping the customer in the loop: that's a no-no.
After all the wrangling and unresponsiveness of the big box retailer (and the time it took for the manager to discover that it was indeed his company's error), the long and short of it is that our order was loaded on the slow train to nowhere headed unhurriedly west and there was little we could do to influence the delivery date.
The manager offered to help us understand the train schedule so that potentially we could pick up the order at the train depot in Washington State and haul it back ourselves to eliminate several days of transportation delay. And he offered us some unspecified monetary compensation once we received the cabinets.
Despite his promise to keep us updated every second business day, by Labor Day, we heard nothing from either the cabinet company or the retailer, despite follow-up calls and emails to both of them. We were pretty much ill-disposed towards the big box retailer at this point.
August: Other Big Parts Arrive
The first of July when we had not heard back from the appliance company, I asked for an ETA on our cooktop and hood, the only new appliances we purchased for this job. Our sales rep told us mid-July for the hood and end of July for the cooktop. Later in the month, he reached out to let us know that the hood was in hand, but that the cooktop would come in on August 12. It actually arrived about the 18th and we went to fetch both pieces in our truck the week following. The delay did not impact our schedule at all, given the ordeal with the cabinets.
The state of the world now is such that there are long lead times for many manufactured goods. A case in point is that it took three and a half months to get our cooktop. I did not order the brand of cooktop that I wanted, or even my second choice, because the manufacturers were quoting deliveries a year out. I guess I am happy that we got ours in such a "short" time.
As for not getting the cooktop that I wanted, I am a retired professional chef and as long as I have a heat source, I can cook. In my career, I have cooked on every kind of heat source imaginable, including a can of Sterno, charcoal hibachi, butane canister stove, microwave, open wood fire, wood stove, electric range, propane camping grill, 1950s natural gas range, and electric induction. The old saw, "It's not the arrow; it's the archer" applies: any decent natural gas cooktop will serve me just fine, and I managed to select one with a pair of 22,000 BTU burners, which is a lot for residential cooking.
The cooktop was bolted to a custom pallet that just barely fit into the bed of my standard pickup. Having worked in a wine warehouse for four years, I have to say that this was the finest constructed pallet that I have ever seen! To minimize storage space in the house, I took the cooktop off the pallet and we carried the cooktop and several small boxes of grates and burner caps into the dining room where we are staging a lot of parts for the upcoming construction.
 |
| The Range and Hood Arrived |
 |
| Cocktail Table Base |
August: Resetting the Schedule, Again
In late August, despite assurances from the big box store manager to assist us in expediting the shipping of the second cabinet order, we heard nothing despite repeated voicemails and emails to the manager and cabinet designer. I tried to reach out to the area sales rep for the cabinet company, but he was on vacation.
I finally gave up on dealing with them and gave up any expectations for expedited delivery. Out of desperation, I called the shipping department at the cabinet manufacturer to find out when our second order would normally arrive to get a firm date on which to base our schedule. They told me September 21.
In the absence of any better information, I set about re-doing our schedule. Meanwhile, I got a text from the shipping company moving up our delivery date on the first set of cabinets to September 7th from the 9th. We will have to pull one of the vehicles out of the garage to stage the cabinets and other construction materials for a couple of weeks before we can begin demolition.
Given the September 21 delivery date, first up was a conversation with our contractor who was very understanding through the entire process. Because most of his work is smaller renovations and repair work for realtors, he has a bit more flexibility in his schedule than some contractors. We briefly discussed doing the kitchen in two parts, once when the first set of cabinets arrived and then again when the second set arrived, but that just made no sense to either of us. We quickly discarded that idea, deciding to wait for all the cabinets to arrive on September 21 and then get after it.
The next step was to push out the countertops, yet again. I emailed our sales rep with the countertop company to push back the schedule, but got no response. After several days I called to find out that she "left the company" since our last communication. We all know what "left the company" means. We moved the templating date to October 5 and the installation date to the 14th. That meant that we could not realistically get started with the tiling until Monday the 17th. This collided with a planned trip to Portland for a couple days on the 18th and would ultimately push the completion date out an entire week.
Late August: Ordering the Final Bits
In late August, I ordered the glass shelving for the bar from a local glass shop, the one which back in March replaced four of our windows whose thermal panes had failed. The unit cost on the shelves had nearly doubled since my quote from April!
In speaking with the supplier of the wine refrigerators, I discovered that each so-called 48" double-door unit is really two separate 24" units. That's all well and good in terms of storing the units during construction and moving them into place after the base cabinet is assembled, but there's a catch. Four units means four electrical cords to plug into the wall. We only have a single two-plug outlet in the area of the new bar. Given four units with four compressors, we may have to run a second circuit from the breaker panel to split the load, an expense that we had not budgeted. In fact, we budgeted zero electrician dollars for the bar.
In preparation for building the floating shelves for the kitchen, we went to a local lighting store to look at the various styles of under-counter lighting and how each would impact the design of the shelves. My vision for the three 5-foot long floating shelves to the left of the wall oven/microwave stack was to have lighting under each of the three shelves as well as on the top of the upper shelf.
My vision slammed headfirst into financial reality at the lighting showroom. Most lighting styles such as puck lights and LED strip lights are low voltage, meaning that we would have to stash one or more AC/DC transformers somewhere. Where would that somewhere be with floating shelves? The other option is a mini fluorescent-style (though the bulbs may actually be LED) that runs on AC, exactly what we have under and over the current cabinets, though for some unknown reason, our upper lights do not light.
The transformer issue pretty much ruled out the low-voltage lighting, so we looked at the AC lights and found them to be priced just over $70 a linear foot. Holy crap! $1500 for lights for shelves? That pretty much pushed us to recycling and reusing the fairly ugly fixtures that we already have, even if that means we need to change out a bunch of fluorescent tubes for LED ones.
Because these fixtures are not among the most stylish that you will ever see, we decided not to put them under the top two shelves where they would be easily visible, opting instead to run them on top of the upper shelf, under the bottom shelf, and above the ovens and refrigerator, just as our current lighting is run. To do otherwise would involve a good bit more electrical work and wall repair in running wiring in a finished wall. We are trying to keep the job as cost- and time-efficient as possible.
Time-efficiency is key for us: going without a kitchen for an extended period is a non-starter. In a former life, I was without a kitchen for about 7 months, feeding two little girls using a tiny microwave and a crockpot and washing dishes in the bathtub. Joy, O rapturous joy that was! Never again!
Given the 3-week ship time quoted by the wine refrigerator supplier, I ordered the wine refrigerators on the last day of August and they shipped on the second of September. The rest of the month of September was given over to getting prepared for construction, covered in the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment