Week 9 Day 1

One of the things I vowed to do in this whole progress was to report the ups and downs of this remodel as honestly as if you were by best friend sitting on the couch at the end of the day.  I want to keep things real and part of being real is sharing the disappointments alongside the excitements.  I feel very fortunate that we are 9 weeks in and have yet to have any real issues.  Unfortunately that ended today.  As part of the structural changes to the space there were places where our wood floors would need to be patched to cover what was previously hidden areas (under previous cabinets, where the wall used to be at the now widened doorway from the hall into the kitchen.  We had several meetings before the project kicked off where we shared we had a partial box of the original hard wood floor remaining.  We also showed the box to the contractor during site visits.  We were assured that between that flooring and flooring recovered from under the cabinets there would be enough.  As I shared last week, it was determined there wasn't enough.  The onsite carpenter didn't remove any existing flooring from now hidden areas, and so all we had was the partial box.  So he went on a hunt for some matching flooring.  The sample he brought in seemed close to the same.  However, when he brought in a box you could see there was a difference in the colors.  I reviewed with him last Friday that I would expect the large space in the hallway/new entrance to be patched with the original wood and then weave in the space between the dishwasher and island withe remaining of the old with the new.

The workers were here most of the day Monday making more noise than any other part of the project, setting the fire alarm off twice due to dust from the saws, and I was so excited to go downstairs and see it.  After all, I had been assured several times during design these guys are good at what they do and you wouldn't be able to tell the floors were retrofitted, save for some possible above floor nail holes which would be small and puttied.  I was immediately stunned when I walked into the hallway and saw this (note all the blue tape is after the fact, but will play into the story):

To the left and up one board and 2 boards directly above the longest piece of blue tape you will see two 12" boards that are new.  No where in our floor pattern do we have short pieces in the middle of the pattern.  Also, it is with the new flooring and is much darker in person that it appears in this picture. The board noted on the left is also slightly higher than all the other boards all the way around it.  There are some variances in the flooring heights in our exiting floors, but no boards that sit up above the floor the way this one does.  So, short board, wrong color, too high... I wasn't happy.

I couldn't decide if the dull or bright picture showcases issue #2 more so you get both.  Basically because our old island only took up a small part of the kitchen and the rest was open w/ full flooring the original flooring is woven in between the counters and the island.  The new flooring however was laid as if we were laying new flooring in this area with no pattern...just cut the boards to fit and glue them down.  This is a huge fail in my book.  The floors should have been laid in a pattern to mimic the existing floor.  (Note: there are 6-7 planks toward the top of the picture that don't have seams like the ones at the bottom do, to explain this issue.) 

By the time the Mister got home from work I had convinced myself that I could live with this, I was overreacting, etc.  But he was not  It's very funny.  He's normally very calm, the voice of reason, etc. and I am the one who is all "this isn't perfect, my OCD can't handle this" insert more ranting and raving (by me.)  So when he wasn't happy with it, I knew we actually had a problem.  So I emailed the contractor, lead carepenter, and production supervisor to state our issues with this work.  I requested a meeting for Tuesday, but due to their unavailability we will be meeting with them on Wednesday.  To stress the importance of this, the Mister will actually be at this meeting in person.  He normally has me deal with the weekly meetings, so if you know us in real life you know that for him to leave work and come home for this meeting means it is a big deal.  

I am confident we will end up with a great solution and that our issues will  be addressed and resolved.  One of the reasons we chose the company we did was because of talking to other customers and hearing positives things about the final results.  I firmly believe that when you pay someone to do work for you they should do it as good as if not better they would do it in their own home.  They should make things seem seemless and like they have always been there.  So until Wednesday, I leave you with our current floors and the drama they have brought into our lives.