Carved in Stone

Today was the day we have been waiting for for most of the summer: getting the granite installed which will finish our remodel on the laundry/ weaving room.

As promised, the installers arrived a little after 10 a.m.  I was afraid that the granite we chose in the yard would not look good in the house, but happily I was wrong.  The granite is beautiful.  For the most part, it is white with shades of blue/grey and some brown undertones mixed in.  One section has some darker stone for a bit of contrast and interest.  We both are happy with the selection we chose.

The long piece looks and fits well.

When the installers came in to measure, they used a laser to measure the walls as well as the length.  The long piece fits beautifully against the not-so-straight wall.  We chose the same edge as that of the kitchen, so everything is coordinated.

The small cabinet next to the laundry is complete.

The small piece next to the laundry units is fairly bland and white, but that is fine, too. It fits well with the small area and will provide a welcome place to put bottles or boxes of items that I might need while washing the laundry.

The desk piece is beautiful, and I hate to see it go.

The desk slab is probably the prettiest of the three pieces with lots of contrast and color.  Sadly, it also is a problem.  The installer said that he deducted 1/8 of an inch from the overall length when he measured the area because the granite needs to fit between two cabinets.  Unfortunately, when the technician cut the slab, he also seems to have deducted an additional 1/8 of an inch. The piece is now 1/4 of an inch short, and it does not look correct in the area. This is a classic communication error that has us both very upset and will cost someone other that us lots of money.

A quarter inch does not seem like much, but it is
too much to fill in with caulk.  We need a correctly cut
piece of granite in this area since it will be a heavily used
part of the room.

The desk slab needs to be replaced with a piece cut correctly, and we do not think that there is enough granite left from the original slab to cut a new piece.  The original slab probably does not have enough because the granite company sold the remainder of the slab to someone else.  Rick told them that our granite had to be cut first, and that they were not allowed to cut for someone else's job until we were sure that our job was acceptable.  From the way everyone is acting and not communicating with us, we are guessing that the company went ahead and sold the remaining part of the slab before our job was complete.

We have two options.  If the rest of our original, matching slab is indeed gone, then the company can find us a new piece from the same lot that will match what we have in the rest of the room, or they can take it all back, find us a new slab, and cut everything again from a whole new slab.

Rick is angry.  I am just disappointed.  We wanted to finally have closure to this room, but once again we have to wait to see how everything works out.