Remodeling

Best Buy Survey

As part of the remodeling I purchased an item online from Best Buy. I was informed that I would get a phone call the day before, sometime before 8:00 PM, to give me a 2 hour window for my delivery. They called at 7:45 PM. An omen perhaps?

The truck pulled up with 5 minutes left in the widow and the folks delivering the item were courteous and swift with getting my stuff in the house. Because there weren’t installing anything they were done and gone even before the 5 minutes left in the delivery window expired. This morning I got an email asking me to take a survey on my experience. They dangled the usual entery in a sweepstakes drawing as enticement to complete it, but I was going to do it anyway. It was only about 8 or 9 questions long and the largest time portion was spent writting the comments on the end:

They arrived at 2:55 PM, with just 5 minutes to spare in the 1:00 PM -3:00 PM delivery window I was given on the phone. The driver called 2 hours before to see if I was at home because he was passing thru on his way to another town and wanted to know if he could make the delivery then. I was at work, but he couldn’t wait the 15 minutes it would take me to get home, so he continued on.

The manifest they left behind with my purchase had a delivery time frame on it of 10:30 to 12:30 and an estimated Time of 11:19 AM – 11:34 AM (right around when he called.) If someone had called me earlier with the manifest time frame for delivery I could have received my item in the morning.

Your survey also needs some work and I would have rated it as completely unsatifactory if you aksed me about it. You cannot skip over the items on it that are not applicable, so I rated your delivery service as completely unsatisfactory in “Product Knowledge” and “In Store Experience” because it was an online purchase and all they had to do was put the box in my home.

130,000 Bad Thoughts

After looking at what we had and where we could go with our (bigger than the cabinet guy thought) kitchen this morning, Donna and I devised a plan that we thought was great. We took the 15″ wastebasket base cabinet that we were going to return and put it on the wall where we had 15″ more room. As a bonus it was a perfect fit to cover up the awkward heating vent to the adjacent room that couldn’t be moved and it placed the trash can in a sweet spot between the sink and the dishwasher. To make the top cabinets match we would then need to buy an additional 15″ wall unit. On the stove side we would take down the 12″ inch cabinet off the wall, return it, along with the 12″ base cabinet and replace them with 21″ cabinets to fill up nearly all of the “extra” 12 inches on the that wall.

The contractor arrived and pitched his idea, buy 4 new 12″ cabinets and add them to the ends on both walls of what we now had. This would work to his best advantage as he could finish installing what we had on hand and then add the new stuff when it showed up. We shot him down for a couple reasons, the main one was something that Donna has been against from the git go, she didn’t want anything to the left of the stove, between it and the door. The cabinet guy originally wanted to put a 9″ thing there and now here was the contractor proposing something 12 inches wide there. Another one is that we didn’t want any more 12″ cabinets or any at all now that we’ve seen one and realized there isn’t much you can put it in one of them.

After the confab with our contractor we went over to Lowe’s in North Augusta and chatted with our cabinet guy. He was apologetic and we kept it civil. He ordered up the 3 new needed cabinets and also ordered a no cost replacement for one of the ones we received where the doors didn’t look straight and wouldn’t close completely. He is going to expedite them, so hopefully we will get them in a week to 10 days instead of the 4 weeks the original order took. Now because of the configuration changes we will get to return some of the already ordered stuff and that will cover about 60% of the cost of the three new cabinets, so it is not a staggering expenditure.

The contractor and some friends thought that we shouldn’t have to pay any more money to make things right, but Donna and I are more pragmatic than that. Sure cabinet guy mis-measured, but the contractor himself should have caught it if he had actually measured instead of just eyeballing the cabinet guy’s print outs and signing off on them. Heck, I should have noticed the difference myself because I had measured the kitchen when I drew up plans for the granite people to use to quote the counter tops with. We figured had the cabinet guy measured right, or someone noticed the difference in the lengths somewhere along the line, we would have been spending that much more on the right sized cabinets anyway. The only real harm done is we will be without a kitchen for a couple weeks longer which when all is said and done will seem like nothing.

Almost about the time we got back home from North Augusta the Emperor hit the 130,000 mile mark.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1201

Day Nine

Day Nine

A little bit of sheet rock, a tangled mess of wires and still no grout on the floor and they were here until around 7:00 PM tonight. Looks like to me they still have at least another day to button this up. I don’t see how they can start hanging cabinets tomorrow.

Cabinet Day

C Day

Our cabinets were scheduled to arrive between 1 and 5:00 PM today, so Donna and I took the afternoon off so that we could be here when they arrived. We thought, that like the dishwasher when it was delivered, we would get a half hour final call to let us know they were on the way. We left work at 11:30, parked at our bank and turned on the cell phone. We went inside and cashed a check, then walked the 4 blocks to Betsy’s on the Corner for lunch. On our way back to the car we made a quick stop at the new candy store in downtown.

It was now a little after one, so we headed home to change clothes and do some running around in LA (Lower Aiken. AKA the south side of town.) When we got to our street there were no trucks in front of our house. Uh, oh. Did our contractor have another reason not to show up for the third day in a row. We were pleasantly surprised to find the kitchen in shambles as he had been here and was knee deep in the wiring process. Must be at lunch. Off to Lowe’s we go. We are eyeballing wallpaper and borders for the dining room and curtains for the living room and dining room. Hey, got to spend the big gift card on something.

After Lowe’s we were going to go to the library to kill some more time and await the call, but seeing as home was sort of on the way, decided to drive by and see if there were any trucks in front of the house now. As we headed up the street before you turn onto our street we ended up behind a big Budget Rental truck. Both Donna and I simultaneously said to each other, “I wonder if those are our cabinets?” Sure enough the truck turned onto our street and started slowly creeping its way along with its flashers on. We hung the first left and drove the circle around the back way and came out in front of our house as the truck was slowly pulling to a stop there too.

Never did get that final warning call.

So Much For A New Top

With all the back and forth of cabinet choices (location, specifications, color, etc.) we didn’t get around to ordering them until the 18th of January. This turned out to be a good thing as Lowes, along with the $1300 discount we got, added a promotion on the 17th that gave you a gift card for 10% of your total cabinet order. Of course it was for 10% off after they took the $1300 off, but I was taught never to look a gift horse in the mouth.

We asked the cabinet guy if it was a Lowes gift card and he said, “No, it’s a Visa gift card. You can use it anywhere.” Cool, we thought, that’ll cover the cost of a new convertible top for the Emperor. The top has got a few major blemishes, a few minor blemishes and a few minor places where the top layer of fabric has worn down to the lining. No leaks yet, but…

Got two envelopes in the mail today with the word Lowes on the top line of the return address. One was to let us know we were pre-approved for a Lowes Visa credit card and the other was a gift card for 10% of our cabinet purchase – on a Lowes gift card.

Trying hard not to stare at the equine periodontia.

Day Seven

Day Five

No work again today, the contractor’s kid is sick and he has to stay home and play caregiver. Obviously the wife has the job that requires good attendance, probably because it supplies the medical insurance.