A kitchen project is almost always a major, messy and expensive adventure. A beautiful result is not guaranteed. It requires good planning, an adequate budget, a good contractor and a willingness to see yourself as the buck-stops-here responsible party in all phases. This is how you become certain that all your efforts and all our expenses will result in something wonderful.
If you choose a dishonest contractor it might be fair to see him (or her) as the cause of any foul-ups. But it was your choice.
If you buy a brand of appliances that’s inexpensive but has a poor consumer rating, well, you get what you pay for.
If your countertop supplier sudddenly has a months long delay, it would seem right to blame the incredible inconvenience, say of three more months without a real kitchen, on them. But is that REALLY the problem.
Another way to approach your project is to see yourself as the responsible, causative person in all matters. Is this fair? Maybe not. BUT, this is how you can prepare best and handle best and fix best.
There is usually nothing you can do with delayed labor or materials. As frustrating as these might be, to write angry emails to the supplier or to yell at their customer service agent, or to threaten a contractor (small business owner) with a lawsuit, is tepting in the heat of the moment. Unfortunately most of us know these things don’t get us where we want to go.
A better approach, given one’s commitment to start and finish a kitchen remodel, is to assume you are always at cause. Not that you are to blame. But after all it’s your project and if things don’t go quite the way you wanted, the cleverness, the patience, even the joy of solving the unsolvable venting issue (for example) comes when you are relaxed and being responsible. You only tie the problems into more and more unsolvable knots when you try to blame others.
Now our company seeks to help a homeowner avoid as many pitfalls as we can. (a designer we worked with oncer told us, after 25 years of kitchen projects, that if at leasttwo things don’t go wrong in a kitchen remodel, it’s not a kitchen remodel!).We work hard to ensure your design work is correct and your cabinet order is complete so that coordinating other deliveries and your labor team is easier.
But still, with the nicest labor team, with good supplier service, with great planning, some things might not work out exactly how you had hoped. You often have to adjust your timing or your budget, or both. Staying calm, deciding your project is a creative adventure, will result in faster, better and less costly solutions than getting upset and blaming others.
Only an adult can remodel a kitchen.
Brilliant design. Elegant cabinets.
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