Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Kitchen Remodel Chaos Starting Soon

It has seemed a very hectic few months. Since late November, we have bought a house, moved, cleaned the new house, gotten rid of Hwang trash, sold the old house (and got rid of our real estate agent), cleaned and did move 2 out of the old house, did some stuff around the new house (cleaned deck, painted several rooms, etc.), and now are embarking on our first major remodel project on the new house: the kitchen. We figure that we're used to our lives being crazy and hectic, so what's wrong with yet another thing going on?

Picking cabinets has been a several months long project. We really didn't like what we had (white painted oak), and the embellished white tile is horrible. In the end, we went with new cabinets that were in stock and that we liked. Do we lovvvvve the cabinets? No, but we like them and think we'll be very happy with them. They have a nice design and seem well made. If we had ordered cabinets most other places, it would take several weeks or months to get them, and we are on the fast track to a new kitchen.

In the old house, we worked with a contractor on the kitchen floor last year. He was efficient, easy to work with, and did a quality job. We also had the bathroom remodeled in the last house, but that contractor didn't do a quality job and was more like Barney Fife. So, anyway, once we had a good experience with him, we wanted to make sure that he was at the top of our list when we moved into this house and encountered all these things that need to be done.

We've had him come out twice to look at the project, and we had narrowed down much of what we wanted (minus the cabinets). His fee seemed okay, but we wanted to make sure he wasn't out of line with what other contractors were charging. We called another contractor that seemed to do good work as well and had him come out to look.

The other contractor was seriously tedious. During the estimate process, he was getting fixated on many things. "You should put a cooktop in the island. You should put in a new garbage disposal." Then there was the part that he couldn't give us an estimate until he actually got all the stuff ripped out. Then he e-mailed me the next day. I responded, he responded, then I didn't respond. The next day he e-mailed to ask if he offended me. AH, what a high maintenance dude! He had answered all of my questions, and I was trying to get in contact with the contractor we had experience with. Then the other dude e-mailed again to see if we made a decision.

Yes, we decided on the contractor we had experience with because he: 1) came in lower and 2) doesn't seem to have many personality disorders...unlike this dude.

Cabinets ordered on Friday, they will be in our house on Thursday. The contractor will start on Monday with demo. And we will be without a kitchen...for a while. I'm thinking we will be eating on paper plates and napkins for a while. I'm not looking forward to the disaster area, but hopefully it will only be a few weeks.

1 comment:

Melissa said...

I hope it's as painless as possible.