Before I get too much further I should show you the cabinets that we included to have refaced and granite counter tops installed.

 Master Bath 1 of 2

Master Bath 2 of 2

Pool Bath

Guest Room Bath

Nautica Bath

Excuse the peachy color, I shot these with with my cell phone and the color wasn’t great.

Recapping briefly I developed a description of the project, asked contractors for pricing and got an array of prices.  The array of prices is the scary part of this project.  If I received four prices and they we all within a couple hundred dollars of each other, I would give the project to the one I felt the most comfortable with and life would go on.  But in this case one contractor was half the price of the big boys in town.  After some checking with great references I gave the project to the low contractor and decided to include his granite price and have the project done all at once.

We had a very specific schedule we were working with.  The holidays were coming up and we scheduled to go North to see family and planned on returning after the New Year.  Shortly after the New Year we had guest coming down so we wanted the project done before they arrived.  A good long lead time and even if the project took a couple weeks we were good with the schedule (contractor estimated 2 days).

The contractor kept me informed via email the with the progress of the order and we picked a day to begin.

The granite people were first.  I was shocked when I walked into the first bath room (the pool bath) to see the very large miror sitting in the hallway.  I never imagined they would remove the mirrors.  The granite went in without much trouble however on piece of granite didn’t look like the piece we selected.  Our contractor said it was cold and that it would lighten as it warmed.  Over the next several days we watched it get lighter but not quite as light as we had wanted.

With the granite in, the contractor began sanding on the side panels and the cabinet box to rough up the surface so the veneer could be attached with glued.  The veneer looked great!  The contractor had pre-fitted the new cabinet doors with their hinges and began installing them. 
Then the first snag.  The contractor missed the dimension on one of the drawers and the door face was way too small.  Fortunately it was in the master bath so our guest would not see it.  The contractor told me one package of the frames were broken on the end when they were shiped and he would not have enough to complete the frames.  Of course the frame that was damaged was for the guest bath.

I assumed the contractor would run down to the lumber yard get some more material, stain it, cut it…crisis over.  Not the case.  The stain, wood and finish were all corridinated through his Canadian supplier so the final project would all match flawlessly.  So the contractor ordered the new door and more frame material to match the cabinets.

Now we had a couple weeks to wait.  After a couple days the veneer on the side panels of the cabinets began to ripple like aq wavy potato chip.  The contractor came right over to look at the veneer and took photos to send to his supplier.  Turns out it had been really cold in Florida for several weeks.  The veneer sat in his trailer over night, in the cold, and when it was installed the wood expanded and seperated from it’s paper backing.  The supplier agreed to send veneer with a pheonolic backing to eliminate this problem.

This brings up a very important issue for any work involving wood.  Always let the wood sit in the space it’s going to be installed in at least 24 hours so that it can acclimate to the temperature and relative humidity.  A flooring project maybe a couple days just to be safe.

So that’s were we are now.  The next installment should show the completed project.