'Tis the season to fall through the bathroom floor, crash through the kitchen ceiling, and dangle in the air. At least according to Michael, one of the contractors working on our house. He fell off the ladder in the bathroom, and ended up stradling a joist, with his leg crashing through to the floor below. But he's okay. Thank goodness the other contractor caught him to break his fall, as either scenario (losing his family jewels on my bathroom's joist, or continuing the fall all the way through to the first floor) would not be pretty. After the shock and making sure he was okay, I had a good laugh, and then for kicks we decided to do a re-enactment for the blog. Gotta love these guys and their sense of humor...here's what poor Michael looked like from the kitchen:
Here's the kitchen post-crash:
And here's the view from one floor up into the second floor:
Now, having a large hole in the kitchen ceiling really isn't bothering me. It might be because this is what the rest of the first floor looks like ever since the guys brought in lumber to start framing the bathroom and the kitchen cabinets from KraftMaid showed up last week. Really, a hole in the ceiling is not even noticeable!
About those Kraftmaid cabinets...we are not happy. Just to check out what the finish looks like (we chose Bisque Glaze on maple cabinets for the sides of the kitchen, and Autumn Blush on cherry cabinets for the island) we opened up a box at random. It was a bisque glaze. The door of the cabinet has a large crack running right down the front, along the grain. Okay, one to re-order. We're not too upset yet - we are pretty easy going people for the most part. Dave chooses a cherry cabinet box. Open it up and hm...the stain is very uneven to the point where it looks like they even missed a couple spots along the raised panel front. Starting to get a tad upset here. I head for the phone to call Lowe's (where we ordered them) while Dave starts in on a third box (maple with the bisque glaze). The top corner joint on the front door panel is not lined up and there is a gap in the wood seam. We are 0 for 3 and I'm starting to see puffs of steam emerge from my husband's ears. Lowe's says that Kraftmaid is closed on weekends, but they will call on Monday. It is now Wednesday and they are still working on a solution. After some research we found out that Kraftmaid constructs an entire kitchen on the same day - it keeps the stain and glaze uniform throughout the cabinets. I suspect that either a poor team worked on the cabinets and that quality control was bad that day. We are requesting that Kraftmaid send someone out to inspect each cabinet and we will decide where to go from there. For now, the contractor (through Lowe's) who is installing the cabinets is on hold and it looks like we may be spending the holidays sitting among boxes instead of enjoying our new kitchen. In the grand scheme of things, this glitch is on par with most home remodeling problems, I'm sure. Now where to put the new range, refrigerator, dishwasher, and chimney range hood when they arrive next Monday? We are plumb out of room!
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Posted by: chimney liner | November 30, 2009 at 02:09 PM