The Honeymoon Is Over

I haven't posted in a few days because there has been nothing to report except general frustration.  After an initial spurt of work on Monday and Tuesday of last week (demolition! electrical! plumbing! cabinet installation!) and half a day of work on Wednesday, no one showed up on Thursday or Friday.  Tony put everyone on other jobs, which apparently were more disastrous and attention-grabbing than ours, and that was that.

I know this is what contractors do.  I know I shouldn't take it personally.  BUT.  When we scheduled this work a month ago, I told Tony that we wanted to make sure as much work as possible got completed during Drew's spring break week so he could be available for answering questions and letting people in.  Tony agreed.  So much for that plan.

I sent Tony a strongly worded email yesterday, which simultaneously praised the crew for their fine workmanship so far and told Tony to arrange their schedules so our kitchen is complete in a reasonable timeframe pleaseandthankyou.  He called Drew for a man-to-man discussion later in the day (why didn't he call me? I have a guess...).  Tony didn't really say anything helpful to Drew.  It was a mighty fine strongly worded email and I'm pretty bummed that it didn't have any effect at all.

Yesterday, John came in to install the remaining two upper cabinets and put knobs on all the doors.  Today, the countertop folks are doing a template for the granite counters.  I had to take the morning off work to let them in and answer questions, which is the exact reason that we asked for all this to get completed last week.

We were supposed to get our stove back today too and our very friendly plumber came by to hook it up this morning.  He couldn't hook up the stove, however, because the microwave wasn't in above the range.  Apparently there has to be "something metal" above the stove because the cabinets are "combustible."  I'm going to gloss right over the part where the cabinets are combustible because, although I know they won't burst into flames spontaneously, that's what it sounds like.

Combustible cabinets. With knobs!

All that's changed here are the knobs.  And the dishwasher, which seems to have
fewer parts than before.  Curiouser and curiouser...

The electrician is at a job in Bourne (way down on the Cape) for the next two days and can't come back until Thursday to put the microwave in.  This means we won't have a stove (or a microwave, for that matter) until Thursday or Friday, but the plumber did say he would try to get the stove back in working order before the weekend.  I begged him to try very hard so that I don't have to eat takeout/packaged salads/pre-cooked chicken any longer.  He agreed that sounded like a pretty rough situation and reiterated his promise to try to make it before the weekend.  The plumber seems like a decent guy and I think the pregnant-woman-begging-for-a-stove thing made an impression on him.  Let's all hope together that it did.

So that's where we are.  Sort of pissed and still eating creatively.  I'll have more to report on Thursday - until then, please eat some home-cooked food on my behalf!