At last, time for an update –

Last time, I had finished figuring out all the design and my contractor had taken the space down to a blank slate …

So now it’s time to start building! It needs floors, cabinets (which also all need to be refinished), countertops, backsplashes, a replacement window, light fixtures, a sink and faucet, and paint. Here’s the rendering:

*Fair warning on this post!* It’s very complain-y. Feel free to skip the words and just look at the pictures –

Cabinetry

Step 1 was ordering the cabinetry – as discussed last time, I’m doing all self-assembled IKEA cabinetry (the “Sektion” series with “Enköping” white door/drawer fronts). Since I wanted to make sure I got super-precise measurements, I waited to place the IKEA order until everything was demo’ed (which was like the day after Christmas 2023). At any rate, when I placed the order, four of the upper cabinet boxes and the one 90″ tall pantry cabinet box were on backorder, but the remaining ~200 items (yes, really) were available to deliver about a week later, just before New Year’s.

And that’s when it all went sideways.

After waiting excitedly for my huge delivery of kitchen bits and pieces, the Saturday everything was supposed to show up, I was awakened by a *very* friendly person calling from IKEA to let me know that five of the pieces (five!) couldn’t be found at the warehouse (or were damaged, etc.) as they were actually picking the order. Therefore, nothing would be delivered today. I slurred something like “Wait what, they’re not delivering anything!?” And of course she goes, “Great! Thanks for confirming. Byeeee!” (I called back about 20 minutes later after all the lights finally turned on in my brain, and the next person I talked to said “Well no, of course they’ll still deliver the rest of the shipment, just the missing items will be delivered later.” Okay great.

So I sat there all day waiting for my 200 items and this is what got delivered:

I called back, they said rest of the order (with the missing items) would be delivered next weekend, after the replacements they had ordered arrived at the warehouse.

One week and many more phone calls with IKEA later …

Pouring down rain, but I had two trucks on the way with the rest of the items! And yes, both trucks actually arrived and actually dropped off a bunch of items … so now my living and dining rooms look like this:

Looking good! Except …

When I actually inventoried all the items (which IKEA requires within a couple days), ~40 items were still missing … and not just like, the little cabinet legs or under-cabinet lighting assemblies – entire base cabinets were missing!

So, back on the phone with IKEA, and the person this time was clearly quite overwhelmed, confused, concerned, doing their best but what can you say at this point, etc. He placed the replacement order for me, which was supposed to take another 1.5 weeks or so. But over the following days as the time was getting closer and I was checking and re-checking the status, the expected delivery date was getting pushed and pushed, and then was finally cancelled.

And then I suddenly got a huge return on my credit card, for over 85% of what I had paid.

I called IKEA, again, and the person said because everything had been returned (?), apparently by the person I called the night after the latest delivery, the system wouldn’t allow a no-cost replacement order to be processed. That person didn’t seem overly concerned about the giant, unsolicited credit, but said I’d have to pay the few hundred dollars to get the replacement items reordered, which net-net seemed like a good deal to me.

Replacement order placed, shipped, delivered, and inventoried without further issue.

But don’t forget, there were still the five backordered cabinet boxes that were completely separate from all this drama – and since I’d had my fill of IKEA’s delivery services, I’d been checking in-store inventories up and down the East Coast the entire time, waiting for those pieces to go in-stock anywhere nearby (and even planning a back-up layout change in case they didn’t). I started reading horror stories on the r/IKEA feed about how long some backorders could take, but eventually figured out if you ‘heart’ the item on the website and then view it in your Likes, it actually shows an anticipated stock date! The morning of January 26th I checked the stock again from bed, saw the items were all finally available, purchased them online for in-store pickup, and then corralled my mom and her much-larger vehicle to help me retrieve them.

On January 27th, 2024, I finally had all items in my possession and was ready to start assembling. We celebrated with two plates of Swedish meatballs. Total price for all cabinets (excl. meatballs), $2,850 (but also a lot of new gray hairs).

The Window

Okay, it’s one window, surely it’ll be much easier than the ~200-item IKEA order? I called Home Depot and two actual window companies to get quotes, thinking it would be what like … $400 for a small, simple window. Everyone was over $1,000. I ended up going with a regional company, very well-known, great reputation, end-to-end manufacturing and installation, great customer service. Guy came out to measure and was great. It was going to take a couple weeks to build the window since they’re all done custom, but okay. I was also excited because they offered the “prairie grid” style, which would be consistent with the style picked by a previous homeowner for the nearby sliding door.

Installation day comes, customer service has proactively kept me informed, guy arrived on-time, and took less than an hour to get everything installed and sealed. He called me when he was done to come take a look, and I was like this looks great … but how do you slide the sashes around to make the pattern line up correctly?

IT WAS BUILT WRONG and no one, from the person (people?) building it, to QA, to whoever put it on the truck, to this guy installing it, noticed. Until the customer. He called Corporate, I called Corporate; the guy who took the initial measurements heard about it and was apparently in the neighborhood, so he popped by later in the day and all the way from the front door (IDK, 40′ away?) goes “Oh wow, yeah that’s definitely not right”. He called Corporate as well – another couple weeks for replacement sashes.

About two weeks later, customer service called back to let me know they’d have to push the install date – BECAUSE THEY HAD BUILT THE SASHES WRONG A SECOND TIME.

Meantime, I still have this wack-a-doodle window installed and I literally get more agitated every time I look at it.

About a week and a half (and another pushed install date) later, the new, correct sashes arrive and are installed in all of eight minutes.

I negotiated a ~20% refund on the window, so the total came to approx. $1,180 – and in fairness, it’s a great window. But also, more new gray hairs.

Countertops

Now I really thought this would be the one to turn it around …

My contractor recommended a local place, and I went to check them out around the time demo was happening to start figuring out what material I wanted. The salesperson there was lovely, patient, and helped me pick two samples (“Absolute Black” granite and “Carbo Brushed” quartz by Viatera) that I really liked for their general similarity to soapstone. The granite was a great price and under my budget, the quartz was overbudget but ya know … so pretty!

Then, they just stopped responding. Next! So I went on Yelp and reached out to another couple places (although at least in my town, they’re all apparently just lined up next to each other in one industrial area, like car dealerships). In early Spring (once I had the cabinets and cover panels in), I kind of just reached out and said can you give me your prices on these two stones that I already had quotes for, and narrowed down from there who I actually wanted to go meet in person. One place came in a bit high and were a little snobbish when I went to their stone yard, but generally seemed knowledgeable and had at least the granite slab on-site, which I ultimately didn’t like, so I was about to buy the more expensive quartz from them (which would have been close to $10,000, versus a $6,000 budget). But, another place then came in way lower, they still had solid Yelp reviews, and their salesperson was lovely to work with.

And, when I went to their stone yard (again, spitting distance from the other two places), we were walking around outside and I looked over and locked eyes with this beauty:

I was like “wHaT iS tHaT” and the salesperson was like, “oh yeah, that’s soapstone” and I was like “oh it’s expensive” and he was like well it’s 5% more than granite. So I was like whatever, I want it, and when he wrote it up it was all of $5,000.

So someone came out to template that week (I was holding my breath waiting for him to be like “who installed these cabinets they’re a mess”, but the only poo-poo-ing I got was for the drywall I had taped together, which is not strictly correct drywalling technique, who knew). That guy was awesome and made the prettiest diagram of my kitchen on graph paper:

And, I got to go back to the stone yard the next week and decide not only the layout of the big cuts but also the radius of the corners!

They were a little busy, so I had to wait 2-3 weeks for install. Mind you, I’d been living first without countertops, and then with just cardboard laid over my cabinets so I could set only very lightweight things down, for four months. But then it was finally the day, and I was very glad to see these folks roll up:

The install was going really well, until they did the final wipe down. I hadn’t seen what finishing product they used, but I pointed out to the installers and the salesperson that it looked uneven and messy. They all agreed that the finish they had applied just needed to soak in overnight and would even out by the morning … that sounded a bit like crap to me, but hard to disagree when I just have a strong hunch about it and these people all do this for a living. So, the next morning I came downstairs … and it looked like this:

So I wrote the salesperson back and he said he’d send someone back to completely redo the finish. I told him to make sure they did the whole thing, nice and even. After the second attempt, it looked like this:

At this point, I was about ready to cry every time I looked at these countertops – I just literally ~hated~ them and ~hated~ all these vendors I had been dealing with who were constantly doing the absolute least. And, the truly irritating part was that in both cases, the installers insisted that it was right. After the second attempt, the guy also insisted that a lot of what I was pointing out was “natural” discrepancies in the stone. At least that time, I took pictures of what he was using … “polished granite and marble sealer”. I pointed this out to him, and he said “no, it’s for soapstone, too”. At this point, I wrote the salesperson again, very upset, sent him three separate links to websites explaining that soapstone shouldn’t be sealed, just rubbed down with mineral oil. He said he then talked to the owner, and wrote back saying I was right about the mineral oil (!), and insisted on sending someone back to fix it. I agreed (basically writing these countertops off at this point, and found a soapstone-only installer in Virginia that I promised myself to call later to ask for help whenever these guys finally admitted defeat), with the stipulation that none of the previous installers would be welcome back in my house for refusing to own-up to messing it up in the first place.

One business day later, a different guy showed up with a jug of acetone (which I had already learned from the Internet is how you remove granite sealer when an installer who doesn’t know better incorrectly uses it on soapstone) in one hand and a jug of mineral oil in the other. He kind of looked at the countertops and was like “… yeah I think they might have used granite and marble sealer on these …” and then gave me a face like 😬.

So anyway, about 30minutes later, he was done, and the countertops had gone from hot mess to Sunday best:

I thought about asking for a discount, but I just wanted to be done with these people. Total for soapstone countertops: $5,000.

In Conclusion …

Even now, I know this is good experience (that’s why I’m writing it all down – so I remember it!). And, I wanted this – I’m doing this without a GC to save money and get the knowledge for myself. But also, what the heck is wrong with people.

Next time, on Debits & Design …

I’ll show the actual build process!

Thanks for reading!!