An Update on Our Kitchen Update

Hi–I thought about one of those catchy titles like “Our Kitchen Update–The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous” because that would be appropriate! I don’t have any pretty after pictures to show you of the updates we are making in our kitchen yet but hopefully will soon. If you missed what we are doing you can read more in this post here.

Also–I am working on a Nordstrom Anniversary Sale post since we have traditionally covered it each year. I will post it as soon as tomorrow since the next level of cardholders can shop. I know that not everyone is interested in the sale (or is already sick of hearing about it!) but there are always great back to school items for kids and gift ideas worth sharing in addition to all the fashion so I thought it worth a post. So I’ll be back with that.

Back to our kitchen…so like everything in the building industry right now things are moving slowly, but fingers crossed, the crew is coming tomorrow to replace the counters and add our new sink and faucet and hopefully even install our new range.

I did make a modification to our original plans to not expand the cabinets to accommodate a larger range. The main reason was simply scope and cost. For various reasons, we decided that adding the 36″ range was too much money just to get an additional burner or two. As this isn’t our forever home, and this update is primarily to increase the value of our home while making the kitchen more aesthetically pleasing and user friendly, I couldn’t justify the price for two more burners on the stove. I think my contractor was relieved not to deal with it and things were able to move forward a little faster, which is nice.

So here are the good and the ridiculous stories–first of all, over the many years we’ve been blogging we have worked with a number of companies in the home decor industry but this is not sponsored! I want to be sure tell you how easy it has been to use The Home Depot for the appliances.

When I called to see what my options would be to return the larger (heavy!) 36″ range I’d impulsively scooped up during their Memorial Day sale they couldn’t have been nicer and helpful. I was so relieved that I could return it, and even more so when they offered to send a crew back to pick it up out of my garage a few days later. The in-store kitchen designer who helped me order the new cabinets for our breakfast room (which won’t be in until late August so that part is on hold) was also great to work with. The only negative experience I had with them was when I went to the store to pick up the beverage/wine fridge for the breakfast room and the cute (young!) customer service rep was like, “oh, it’s not heavy we can load it”. Long story short, it was SO heavy! I wound up hurting my back trying to help her lift it into my car and wound up in bed for the rest of the day with ice packs–my husband said later it was 150 pounds, so no wonder the two of us struggled to lift it up into my SUV! She was clearly in much better shape than me 🙂 but I am fine now. Oh though the current temperature in the fridge is 79 degrees–sigh–so we still need to exchange it but all things considered, working with THD has been great.

Now for the ridiculous….I knew I wanted to use a basic white subway tile but really liked this less traditional style that had a bit of movement in it. I ordered it from HERE. While I was finalizing everything in my contractor’s showroom he suggested I order one more box just to have some extra, it was scheduled to arrive the day before we left on vacation, and it did. I left the box sitting in my garage.

Mid-week, while we were at the beach, my neighbor texted my husband and said that we had a ton of boxes sitting on our porch. I couldn’t think of what they would be but my neighbor graciously offered to move them into our garage for us while we were gone. When I got home I found this huge pile (and I owe him a thank you gift as these are heavy) of 16 BOXES OF TILE, nothing I ever ordered. After digging through them I found a label from TileBar in NYC, who couldn’t have been more helpful (apparently they sell their tile through Wayfair) but what seems to have happened was that Wayfair inadvertently delivered orders for people all over the country to ME for some unknown reason.

Was Wayfair helpful — Absolutely not. Did they have any idea that this happened or how this happened? None at all.

Thankfully the TileBar group sent the UPS man back to pick it all up and return it to them (I was offering him cold water as he reloaded 16 heavy boxes back into his truck on a 98 degree afternoon, bless him). I have no idea what happened with it from here but if you ordered tile from Wayfair a few weeks ago and are still waiting for it, this might explain it! I have been frustrated with Wayfair from other experiences with them, but this really was ridiculous. Oh, and since none of the boxes of tile was marked, one of the original boxes with my backsplash tile was scooped up with the return and– wait for it–the ONE final/extra box that I ordered arrived completely broken as it was thrown in the box with no packing.

Sigh, so that was fun.

So of course, in the scheme of things these are not real problems, I realize there are much bigger things going on in the world. I am appreciative that we have this project going on as it’s a bright spot, my kitchen has been my refuge this last year and a half. I haven’t been as active on Instagram recently but I will try to share some real time updates if things do in fact get installed tomorrow for those of you who might be interested!

I hope you have a great day!

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