17
May

Log Rhythms: Cabinets at the Cabin…

As you may have noticed, I have a “particular vision” for this cabin and I don’t compromise that, easily. Part of the “vision” was to have very, very simple farmhouse cabinets. And while I’m sure the hubby could have made cabinets for our kitchen, laundry room and bathroom, it was just too time-consuming for a guy who is regularly on the road.

Thus, we elected to use a local cabinet maker. The hubby selected the cabinet maker he felt would do the best job. Unfortunately, I am a very “visual” person–I have to “see” what something is going to look like before I can tell you if that is what I envision. Our cabinet maker chose to very roughly sketch how the cabinets would look and the drawings were not to scale. The hubby convinced him this was necessary to get a final okay from us.

Then, he wanted to put crown molding on everything. Have I mentioned that this time I wanted just plain, square-edged trim with no “fluff”? My idea was to “fluff” them with knobs and drawer pulls that I thought fit with the arts and craftsman era. And when I researched older homes of this style, the kitchen cabinets (if there were any!) were very simple.

Also, our cabinet maker was getting very elderly, so he couldn’t hear what we were telling him. It had to be interpreted by his daughter.

In my research, I had seen pull-out shelves for some of the cabinets and the pantry and his version had very rough edges. They wasted a lot of space and I could envision, on my own, that crumbs might be a problem in the small areas that were not being used. In Texas any kind of food residue can not only attract insects, but also rodents and snakes, so this didn’t make me happy.

Furthermore, I wanted soft close doors and drawers everywhere. I am a migraine sufferer and loud noises when I suffer from one make them worse. In our current home, our bedroom (where I rest from migraines), is right next to the kitchen and the constant banging from cabinets and drawers closing is enough to send me over the edge.

When I showed Mr. Cabinetry how dark I wanted the stain, he tried to convince me to go lighter. I will grant you that I, too, worried how dark things were getting, but I liked the contrast between our lighter walls and floor surfaces and the darker stains.

After all of this, we did okay the plans (such as they were!) and the cabinets did come. Guess what?! As you may have guessed, there were “issues.”

Issue # 1: Many shelves were missing. The “extras” didn’t fit the cabinets that lacked shelves.

Issue # 2: We were using toe-kick HVAC vents in the kitchen and one of the bathrooms and we had to have them come back and cut those. One was cut too big. The vent cover kept falling out.

Issue # 3: I got the crown molding despite my plea for just a straight board.

Issue # 4: Some drawers didn’t soft close.

Issue # 5: Some cabinets wouldn’t open easily.

Issue # 6: One cabinet that was to have glass in the front was missing the glass.

Issue # 7: We couldn’t reach our cabinet maker for months to resolve all of the above issues.

Another thing…the rough edges on a sliding shelf has already left scratches on a cabinet door.

When the gentlemen came to resolve these issues, it was extremely difficult to fix all of these issues, but I will give them credit, they did a good job and were very personable. Conclusion? One of the gentlemen looks like he may be taking over this business and trying to resolve such issues as amicably and responsibly as possible.

While this was going on, I was researching brushed silver cup pulls and very simple knobs. Thankfully, the delay led to great savings through none other than Amazon.com. The only hitch?

No matter how many times we counted how many we needed, we didn’t come up with the right number. Result? I have an extra knob! But, I’ll live with that. And the crown molding.

It isn’t exactly what I envisioned, but the knobs and pulls did make the cabinets pretty good looking. Getting those cabinets installed meant we could finally get our real counter tops, appliances and plumbing fixtures. That meant we could begin actually living in the cabin like real human beings–it was so nice compared to the way we had been existing.

Would we use this cabinet-maker again? Possibly. If our friendly issue-resolver is in charge, we’d probably give him a chance to do the Serenity cabinets. But, if not, we will be shopping elsewhere.

After building 3 homes in 3 different locales I have come to just expect that there will be at least one sub-contractor who will disappoint to some degree. In fact, I think you are fortunate if there’s only one. No matter how many recommendations you get, how much you vet these contractors, there’s still going to be at least one.

Conclusion? Roll with it…make a plan “B” in case an utter catastrophe occurs and move on…these are ALL “1st world” problems.

Friday’s Post: Lumps..

You Might Also Like: Log Rhythms: Floors, Part 2 and Log Rhythms, Floors, Part 1

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2018 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Log Rhythms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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