Back in March, I posted that Cabinet Guy had allegedly ordered my doors. They apparently arrived in May sometime. I didn’t announce that here because, hey, what else is new. I told him to give the doors to Contractor Sal and never heard from him.
Then, yesterday, CG emails saying “I have had these doors for a while. When can I send Cabinet Assistant to install them”. I replied that I wanted Contractor Sal to do it, as I had told him in May. CG said that Contractor Sal was not qualified to do it (??!?!?!) and instead of arguing, I said fine.
I must give you text to understand what happened next:
My email: “Fine. Please give me a window when he will be here. I will not be
available in the late afternoon.”
CG’s response (read this carefully for future reference): “I can work around your schedule. I can send him there in the morning”
Do you read that as telling me that he will come here in the morning? I did. Yet the morning passed with no Assistant. I emailed at noon. And at 2. And at 4. Finally around 5pm, CG replies with this gem:
Jen,
You did not confirm with me that this morning was going to work for you. I checked my email throughout the morning times and had no email from you. I said on my last email that I can work around your schedule and that I can send him in the morning. But needed a confirmation from you
I m sorry for any misunderstanding.
Cabinet Guy
Well, dear readers, I lost it. I was angry at being stood up and when I saw this nonsense I started literally shaking because I was so mad. I gave myself a few minutes to try to calm down. I didn’t calm down. Instead, I sent this email and left a voicemail (since he wouldn’t take my calls) with identical content:
Cabinet Guy-
Are you serious? You said you would send him in the morning. What was
there to confirm about that? You did not ask for a confirmation, did
not ask for a time slot. I cannot believe you are trying to pull an
excuse like this over on me. The levels of unprofessionalism you have
repeatedly subjected me to in this process are mind boggling.
I am left with very few options here. It has been 2 and a half YEARS
that I have been trying to get this resolved with you. Let me make
things very clear. I want the doors delivered to Sal on Monday. I
don’t care where he is, where you have to go, or what else you are
doing. He is perfectly capable of installing them (despite your claims
to the contrary) and, frankly, has done much better work than the
hacking you did when you came here before. Do not try to come to my
house, do not try to send someone to my house. Deliver them to Sal. I
have cced Sal on this message with our correspondence below so he is
aware of the situation.
If I do not hear that doors are delivered on Monday, I will be
contacting my lawyer and I can assure you that I will make sure this
mess costs you more in legal fees than you got from me for the
cabinets in the first place. I have left you a voice mail with these
same details.
-Jen
Magically, he called back 15 minutes later. And get this. First, he said that he never said he WOULD send the guy this morning. He said “I wrote and said I CAN send the guy. C-A-N can.” Yep, he spelled at me. He insisted that it was 100% my fault that the guy didn’t come. If he were here, I’m pretty sure I would have punched him.
Then he goes on to tell me that none of this was his fault. He said it was MY fault because I wanted doors that the manufacturer had to make. He said it was my fault for waiting so long to hear from him. He said he took no responsibility for any of the problems. He had no interest in responding to my assertion that 2.5 years was not a reasonable time for this to take.
I repeated my next step - doors by Monday or lawyer. He said “I don’t want to go down that route with you, Jen.” And I said “You won’t have a choice, Cabinet Guy. You will get served and you will have to respond.”
And 15 minutes after that, the doors were sitting outside my door. That’s right. I have the doors. They are the right size (Contractor Sal measured for them). They are the right color. They are the right pattern. They are sitting in front of their future home on my cabinet.
The Saga of Cabinet Guy appears to be over. All it took was a serious threat of legal action.
Let’s think of what has happened since I started my kitchen renovation, which has been held up only by cabinet guy.
Bush was still President and Rod Blajojevich was serving as Governor of Illinois
The country met Sarah Palin
…actually, that’s already pretty depressing, so I’m going to stop there.
Let’s think about what this means in the bigger picture. Cabinet Guy has finally delivered. It’s pretty close to hell freezing over. Up next…a Cubs World Series win?????
Well, for now, I will just enjoy this victory and the idea that perhaps my kitchen will be finished before I have to replace the next appliance.
Remember that I was talking to Cabinet Guy back in February and he said he would get my doors ordered right away? Well today I woke up to an email from him:
Good morning jen,
They have to be custom made and finished. Please allow 8-10 weeks
Thank you
My guess is that this is 8-10 weeks from today, not from when he said they would be finished a month ago. Furthermore, I’m not sure why it takes 8-10 weeks to make a pair of doors, but such are the mysteries of cabinet guy.
This timeline puts delivery at the beginning of June. At that point, we will officially be over 2 years since the beginning of the kitchen project. That’s normal, right? Renovating an 8′X10′ kitchen would obviously take that long…
When Cabinet Guy was here last time, he lost a piece of cabinet trim. I had three pieces all in the “someday the kitchen will be finished” drawer. When he left, there were only two. He, of course, said he had no idea about the trim.
As I was insulating the dishwasher, I found this missing piece shoved in the back of my cookie sheet cabinet. I’m sure they moved it and just tossed it in somewhere.
With this piece found, I was able to finish putting up the trim that has gone undone since May 2008. It makes a surprisingly big difference. Now the only two things left to do are to fix the end panels that Cabinet Guy messed up (Contractor Sal will do this during his next visit) and to get the right freaking doors. I’m still trying to make Cabinet Guy understand me on that one.
Cabinet Guy responded today. Here’s what he said:
there is a strip that goes on one of the doors to hide the gap. Those are the correct doors for that cabinets. I said if you find it necessary to get new Qdoors[sic] that I will do my best to work with the manufacture to make custom doors if all possible. Sal was going to install a strip between the doors that would have resolved this problem.
The thing is, he told me to put this strip in before and I said “No, get me some damned doors without a gap between them.” Contractor Sal took measurements for this and those are the measurements he gave to Cabinet Guy last spring. I informed Cabinet Guy of this, but it looks like we’re back where we were in January 2009.
Contractor Sal won’t be able to save me, either. He broke his foot and is out for 2 months. Perhaps we should take bets on whether or not I’ll have the doors by August.
My friend Dana passed me a link to ModWalls recently. I was looking through the tile pictures and saw this called “new leaf”. I really love it and it’s made me reconsider doing the bathroom in green instead of blue.
After chatting with MOM, I’m more convinced about the tile. I think I’ll do the blue tiles on the wall…
And then do a white tile on the floor like this:
I like the shiny white floor and I think it would go very well with the glass tile on the wall. I had thought about glass on the floor but I think it would be too much. This picture really convinced me. It’s an interesting bath, but I don’t really like the colored floor and with the blue walls I think it would be overwhelming.
So that’s the plan for now. Blue walls, shiny white floor. Then we’ll have white sink/toilet/bath, white walls above the tile, and white cabinets. I’ll still be looking for other tiles just in case I find something that I might like better.
I’m tentatively moving forward with initial plans for my possible spring bathroom renovation.
I’m thinking specifically about tiles. About a year ago I was watching one of those house selling shows on TLC or HGTV or something, and the couple featured had redone their bathroom floor and walls in this amazing purple-blue 1″ glass tile combination. I loved it and wanted their exact bathroom. However, I have no pictures of it to even share the idea. I also think doing something that bold wouldn’t be good if I ever decide to sell this house (don’t worry house - I love you and have no plans to sell you).
However, I think the glass tiles would be really great. I’m debating two things. First, do I do the floor and walls all the same OR do I put the glass tiles on the wall and do something different on the floor? I’m also considering color. I like color. Blue is particularly attractive. I can totally see my bathroom floor and walls in this tile:
But I also see the benefits of something more neutral. This iridescent white is interesting, but I think I’d get over it pretty quickly.
However, I don’t want to do just plain white tiles. Thus, I’m still looking around.
I am also considering how much of the walls to tile. Right now, they are tiled up to about 4 feet. I’d do the shower enclosure all the way to the ceiling. The bathroom is tiny so I could do the whole room up to the ceiling. However, that might feel too much like a weird tiled chamber so I’m leaning toward keeping the rest of the room at the current height. The rest of the walls would be white.
Do you think a blue bathroom in that first tile would be too bold? I know I would love it, and that’s probably enough to convince me despite what anyone says, but I’d be more encouraged if other house people wouldn’t be scared away by a bathroom in that tile.
It’s nice to be back and doing some work on the house this week.
Over a month after the new windows were installed, I finally got around to painting them today. I didn’t take any before pictures because I thought I had tons of them from the siding installation. It turns out I didn’t take any of the windows in place. However, as you can see here, the insides were unfinished pine:
I saved like $300 -$400 getting them unfinished, but I did have a few moments of regret as I spent my day painting them. They turned out well, though, and the new handles also look good.
This officially brings to a close the siding and windows project. Horay!
As a side note, Orkin’s coming back this week. I found a bunch more ants outside nesting behind my downspout. I drenched the nests in the Ortho killer (I know, Orkin people, I’m supposed to let your stuff work, but it wasn’t working), but I’m sure there are more little nests around. Hopefully this application of Orkin medicine will take better than the first. The good news is that someone from Orkin read my earlier blog post about the religious exterminator, was properly appauled, and got me taken off his route (plus he got a little lesson on talking about religion at people’s houses).
First, on the bifold doors, I think I got the wrong term here. I do not mean a door that folds. I meant the kind that open out or in like french doors, but it’s the width of one door and split in the middle. I was looking at home depot and this looked like it, but now after your comments I realized that isn’t split in the middle, it folds in the middle. I definitely don’t want something that folds. I want it to be hinged on both sides so when you open the doors it only takes up half the depth of a regular door. What the heck would that be called?
However, the idea of having the door open into the hall isnt’ a bad one. I’ve considered this before and my only hesitation is that the bathroom door is at the end of the hall:
And that might be tight. (side note: that picture is from the inspection. thank god that carpet is gone, the floors are refinished, and the upstairs is painted.)
I love that sink T.E. posted. That would totally solve my problems with the counter space. I found this picture of it with a pedestal, and I think that it would look great.
Edited to add: The door is a standard 30″ door, and yes, I’m completely gutting the bathroom. The only thing that’s not being replaced is the new window that I replaced last month. I think we’ll even need new walls behind the tile in some places.
The one big renovation project left to do on the house is to renovate the upstairs bathroom. It’s teeny tiny. Seriously, you couldn’t get a smaller bathroom than this. If the girls come in, they can’t turn around in there; they need to back out.
Here’s a picture. The toilet is behind the door.
When the door swings past the sink, it comes within about half an inch of hitting it. Seriously. It’s really REALLY small.
There isn’t a lot I can do to reconfigure it. I want to keep a tub. I don’t want to redo any plumbing.
The tinyness has a few problems. The primary one is that there is no counter space. I have a little glass shelf over the sink (you can see it in that picture), but I still knock stuff over and don’t have a lot of places to put it.
Regardless of what I choose, I’m thinking about replacing the door with bifold doors. That will give me room to expand the space on the sink area a bit. My hesitation is that they might look odd? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a house with these doors on a room, so I don’t know. Thoughts anyone?
