Remodeling

When we first picked out the counter tops at Lowe’s, Cabinet Guy told us that if we did buy it from them we would get a free sink. Cool.

Then the Contractor told us that we should shop around for the counter top because we could get something a lot cheaper from a local granite place. Well he was right, it was a lot cheaper, but that was mainly because we were looking at a different grade of granite. If we did buy from the local shop we would have to buy our own sink for $175. That figure is not a lot compared to the stone, but every little bit saved…

This last time at Lowe’s we looked at the lowest priced granite and it was only $2 more a square foot than the local guy and it was sealed with a 15 year warranty, so decided to just get it there. Plus the sink was free.

After about the third time of hearing that the sink was free, I muttered just loud enough to be heard, “It ain’t free, it’s in there somewhere.” Cabinet Guy responded that it was free as long as we picked from one of three standard sink styles.

When we got home I put the Lowe’s quotes inside our little remodeling folder and removed the counter top quote from the local guy. Before tossing it I looked it over and noticed the price break down; the sink was $175 and the sink cut out charge was $100. I looked back at the one from Lowe’s and sure enough the sink was listed at $0, but the sink cut out cost was $280.

Free sink my ass.

Met with the cabinet guy tonight where we have finalized the cabinets in style and locations. When we mentioned the new counter top color he told us that that color was not as smooth as the Ubatuba we first selected. Sure enough, when we felt a larger sample of the Iberian Sunset it was a lot more pitted. He suggested Caledonia, a slightly darker color with a little more gray in it. Ok, this is it, we’re done. Great.

No, now everything is too light, let’s darken the cabinets some. So we change their color from Maple Spice to Cherry Spice, that’s the ticket. Well now the cabinet pulls need to go from satin nickel to rubbed bronze to match better. The light gray tile still works with that, right? Yeah, about as well, but I’m still angling for a slightly darker shade of gray.

With all this wrangling around we had now spent more than we did before we walked in. But in actuality, the price bump put us up just enough to get an extra $400 discount, bringing the total to a couple hundred less than when we started.

When we got home and started looking at the price list we noticed that the new rubbed bronze draw pulls were $9.12 a piece!! Man, when we picked out some pulls previously they were like $1.97. With 35 pulls we are spending over $300 on them total. But, because if we took the expensive ones off the list to save that princely sum, it would drop us back below the discount threshold, we would lose the $400 savings. This meant in essence those $9 pulls were really saving us $3 each. Wait, the savings is more like $5 because then we have to spend $2 more to buy handles…

Meet with the contractor this evening and agreed on a price for his services. The thigh will be the cabinets, the calf the counter top and the dishwasher the foot. Tiles=Toes.

After signing the paperwork we met him at Lowe’s and showed him our cabinets and the color we had picked out for the counter top, Ubatuba (dark green.) Because we couldn’t find a nice floor tile that we all agreed on to go with it, we picked out another counter top in the same price range, different color, Iberian Sunset (light brown/white.) Couldn’t find a nice tile to go with it either, but the three of us did agree on the color and the shade, now, just to find it in a 12 x 12 tile for a buck and a half.

Yesterday we visited the Aiken Lowe’s to see what kind of kitchen cabinet displays they had setup. We also wanted to get some ideas about counter tops and floor tiles to coordinate with our already selected back splash tile.

So the first order of business was to head to flooring and pick up an example of the back splash tile we feel in love with at the Lowe’s in North Augusta. When we found it, it looked dull and lifeless, then I peeled off the plastic wrapper and the look dramatically improved. It was like they were two different sets of tiles.

Over to the Kitchen Cabinet area and maybe the third display we see, we both go, “That’s it.” We found what we wanted & liked. All of our cabinet questions were answered. Style: Breckenridge, check. Wood: Maple, check. Finish: Spice, check. Hardware: Satin Nickel Flat Pull, got it. We even liked the counter top, it was something quartz, might have been this or something close to it. The whole setup even looked nice with the bare concrete store floor leading us to pick out some gray tile with brown accenting.

The only fly in the ointment was our favored back splash choice looked way out of place in this setup. The standard 4″ counter top material back splash looked just fine. So I walked over to the shelf where we had found it and put it back on top. About three steps away I heard a crash behind me. The tile had slid right off the shelf and self destructed on the floor, I kept on walking.

Today when I called the cabinet designer at the North Augusta Lowe’s to set up our follow up appointment I was excited to let him know we had picked the cabinets we wanted. When I told him what the style was he said, “The flat front drawers in that style are also available in a 5 piece option. Plus this month, you can get the premium Coffee Glaze as a no-cost option.”

Will the choices never stop?

We spent an hour or so with the contractor discussing the kitchen remodeling on Friday evening. He talked us out of rash and radical knocking down of walls or opening doors to other rooms which would have been expensive and of real little value. He did talk us into granite counter tops, tile floors instead of wood and moving the refrigerator to the back wall. He left with a sketch and measurements with the promise of an estimate in the future.

We spent almost 2-1/2 hours in Lowe’s of North Augusta on Saturday afternoon, broken up by a brief lunch break, with a guy designing cabinets. He had already worked some stuff out after having talked to us, but because we opted to move the fridge, that wall had to be redesigned right off the bat. Then we had to change all the other walls because of the moved refrigerator and he had something to the left of the stove that we didn’t want there. When we were almost finished Donna realized that there weren’t any real draws anywhere, so we shuffled a bunch thing around all over again.

We worked from a default style and color to build the layout and at the very end we tossed some semblance of a counter top on the thing so we could see a computer generated rendition of our new kitchen. Exhausted and with our heads spinning we left it with the designer going to send us a screen shot of the design and we promised to come back later next week.

Lowe’s carries about a half dozen lines of cabinets and we were building from the Shenandoah catalog. They have about a dozen styles of doors to choose from and each style can be made out of 4 kinds of wood. Each kind of wood has anywhere from 6 to 12 finishes. Hardware is included and there must be 10 or so styles of pulls and handles each available in 4 finishes.

Add to that there are about 15 color/styles of granite to choose from and then there is something on the order of a hundred color/styles of tile for the floor. How does one choose from all that?

The contractor said pick the granite counter top first and build from there. The design guy says pick the cabinets and work from that. We have chosen the color glass tile we like for the back splash and are trying to match up the other stuff from that…