Progress...
You know, prior to getting started on this project, people always joked that, "this kitchen project is going to really test your marriage." Try to envision some old man cartoon character shaking his fist in the air and then reread that last sentence. Well high-five, Confucius; you were right. Go ahead and remove your hand from your wide open mouth; Lauren and I are still happily married. Though we find it ironic and fitting that we're in a series at church about love and marriage... these things happen for a reason.
(Yes, that "dinner table" is an ironing board. Don't judge, we're being resourceful.)
Though this has been one of the most stressful things we've dealt with to date, I feel like we've handled it pretty well... Lauren, you trying to second that?! Don't get me wrong; Lauren has threatened to take me out behind the woodshed (and not in a romantic context) and wear me out! I've even found searches on her interweb's browser like: how to change door locks without my husband knowing, how to create a new identity, cheap local movers... the list goes on. In my defense, I have an eye for perfection (hence the reason I married Lauren), so when something doesn't look quite right, I pick up on it... and then commence dramatically flipping out. This causes Lauren to flip out, and then we both start flipping out over something we had no control over. For example, we came home the other day to a drop (literally one minor drop) of paint on our linen pendant light in the dining room. That, compounded with backwards reveals (that's a new contractor word I picked up on recently) around the kitchen window, sent me into an epic rant about how our contractor's subs don't pay attention to detail. 99.9998% of folks would never have noticed, but it stood out to me like a Bama fan in G10... It just ain't right! (Virginia friends, G10 is a highly coveted parking garage tailgate spot in Knox-Vegas). Lauren would normally have yelled right back at me; but this time she just sarcastically antagonized me until I caught on that she wasn't as frustrated as I was. We laughed and all was good.
We keep saying we trust our contractor, but I feel like it's the equivalent of saying I trust Graham-bino not to eat my bologna sandwich off of the coffee table... He won't do it if I keep my eye on him. And, we do really trust our contractor. We've had several issues lately with our cabinet supplier and installer. Nothing big, but little issues that you shouldn't have with new cabinets. For example, one of the panels wasn't painted correctly, the cabinet installed around the refrigerator was for a standard fridge, not our counter depth fridge, and they cracked one of the corners of the hanging cabinets (it could probably be covered up, but we paid for a blemish free cabinet). If we were doing this project by ourselves, we'd have no leverage with the cabinet folks to get these items corrected. I mean, what are they going to do if we're not satisfied that the doors aren't perfectly square? I guess they'll lose our business next time we renovate the kitchen.... which isn't EVER happening again! Our contractor on the the other hand has plenty of leverage seeing as they'd want HIS repeat business. He went to bat for us last week (while he was on vacation) and has setup a meeting with the manufacturer's rep as well as our distributor's rep (who also installed the cabinets). This act really reinforced my opinion of him. He may not be communicating as much as my OCD personality prefers, but he's doing his job ensuring that we're getting the finished product we're paying for.
All of these issues coupled with our countertops being delayed a week have delayed our completion date from 7/3 to 7/10ish... We hope! We have friends staying with us this weekend. I hope they don't mind navigating the maze of appliances, living room/dining room furniture, and random items stuffed temporarily in their room! Other than installing some trim and rolling on the first coat of paint (congrats, Stonington Gray, you were selected over the other NINE samples painted on our wall), not a lot of work has commenced since our last post.
Looking ahead this week, all of our appliances will be delivered on Thursday (whoop), cabinets may get adjusted by Friday (whoop, whoop), and countertops get installed next Monday (whoop, whoop, and whoop).
We'll touch base with y'all later! Pray that it all comes together soon!
