4/17/2008

Remodel Week 6-9

MargaretMargaret
Filed under: @ 10:15 pm

My deepest apologies to any of you who may have been following our continuing remodel saga. My absence over the last (oh dear) three weeks has primarily been because each time I sit down to write any entries my internet connection decides to go tits up. For some obscure reason my connection doesn’t seem to like the chaos on the home front.
In fact I’m starting this post in Microsoft Word because despite having a good connection otherwise, for some reason Word Press doesn’t seem to want to connect with my computer.
Andrew has promised some sort of fix for this.

Three weeks later we have a new shower in the laundry room.
New Downstairs Shower
That is working quite nicely, thank you.
New Shower Door
And since the door closes with magnets instead of a tension snap lock like the last one did, it doesn’t even set off our house alarm by triggering the glass break sensor.

Three weeks later we have a functional, attractive, energy efficient, and fully powered washer and dryer.
New Washer and Dryer
My somewhat belated rant about Sears goes like this: On March 17th I called Sears to order a stackable washer and dryer. I made sure to ask the phone monkey whether or not the models we were ordering could be stacked since we have very limited room to work with. Phone monkey assured me that the units could be stacked and told me that our delivery date would be that same week.
NEATO! Sign me up.
I called to confirm the order on March 18th. They confirmed that I had ordered a stackable washer and dryer and told me that my delivery date would be March 29th.
OOOOOoooooKAY, and 11 days from now is the end of this week…how?
I got a little bit terse with this second Sears phone monkey because in the mean time we’d disconnected the washer and dryer and bunged them out in the garage so David could move the 240 volt dryer outlet and the dryer vent. Phone monkey told me that she’d do her best to put us on the expedited delivery list, but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell me what that meant or how I’d know whether or not we’d get expedited delivery.
Take a short break to go through the gyrations described in my last post in figuring out how to get the washer and dryer out of the garage, back into the laundry room and running.
On the evening of March 28th I got two different calls from two different Sears robots (actual robots, not just robotic phone monkeys) telling me that my delivery date was confirmed for the 29th between either 7:30 and 9:30 a.m. OR between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. I guess that’s what the second phone monkey meant by “expedited delivery”.
We got up at 7 a.m. on the 29th and got a call from the Sears truck monkeys (this is not entirely fair of me, they were nice guys and tried hard to compensate for the corporate fuckup, but I’m still irritated) saying they’d be in our driveway by 7:30. They pulled up at 7:15, proceeded to tell us that they couldn’t use the (brand new in the package) woven stainless steel water hoses for the washer because they weren’t allowed to install the washer with anything that they hadn’t provided. They couldn’t hook the dryer up to the vent that David had put into the ceiling, and oh, by the way, had we ordered a stacking kit?
A “say WHAT now”?!
A stacking kit, for those who haven’t had the pleasure, is a little plastic dealie that allows one to stack the dryer on top of the washer. When I ordered my STACKABLE washer and dryer from the first phone monkey and asked whether or not I could STACK them, he had failed entirely to inform me that I needed a stacking kit. And what further irritated me, in this era of computerized inventories and order processing, was that his computer hadn’t alerted him to the fact that these particular models required a stacking kit (some don’t) and why didn’t he sell me one?
So the old washer and dryer are in the truck, the truck monkeys and the new (crated) washer and dryer were in the garage, it was 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday, and the local Sears outlet didn’t open until 9 freaking 30.
All sorts of *very special* delivery words got said at this point.
When the paint stopped bubbling I found that the main truck monkey was on the phone with his supply warehouse trying to find out if they could go back and get a stacking kit.
They could not.
They didn’t have one at the warehouse.
I’d have to order one.
And it would take two weeks for it to show up.

At which point we told them to unload the old washer and dryer, re-load the new washer and dryer and bugger off. I called Sears to cancel the order, got the runaround because their computers indicated that we’d already had our delivery, and was told, finally, that they’d be crediting my purchase back to my credit card within 7-10 business days.
It finally showed up as a credit on my Visa account *YESTERDAY*.
I am disenchanted with Sears.
Especially since when we went to Albert Lee Appliance and spoke with Craig Mims their sales associate (blatant plug), he listened to our story, checked his computer and said: “Well, I don’t think I can get you delivery for tomorrow, but will the day after tomorrow do?”
They sold us the exact same models at the exact same price, they agreed to install the washer with the stainless steel hoses, and when their truck monkeys showed up without the stacking kit they went away, came back half an hour later with the stacking kit and installed the damn thing!
For those of you who are Google-ing “Albert Lee Appliance” to find people’s opinions before you make a major appliance purchase. Go with it, they’re gold.

As it stands, Andrew’s office is finished, the laundry room cum downstairs bathroom is finished (well, okay one wall still needs paint and the floor badly needs scrubbing, but these are things that will get done eventually), and David The Contractor and his buddy Cass The Contractor have been making great strides on the upstairs.
But the most exciting news I have so far is:

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bucket O’ Bile Saloon…..
Bucket O\'Bile Saloon 1

Is O-ficially CLOSED FOR BUSINESS (add ye-haw here if you so desire)
Bucket O\'Bile Saloon 2

For those who haven’t had the pleasure (?) of experiencing our somewhat eccentric decor, the upstairs bathroom had a saloon style swinging door that separated the front part of the bathroom with the bathtub and sink from the back part of the bathroom with the toilet. No, I don’t know why, I didn’t put the damn thing up, so don’t expect me to explain it.
I had a LOT of fun ripping it off the wall however. Took the door off the hinges, took the hinges off the mounting post and then spent about half an hour with a pry bar and a good deal of interesting language to get the mounting post off the wall (it had been secured to a stud behind the drywall with eight, count ’em, EIGHT four inch by 3/16″ nails). I even managed to do it without putting any huge divots in the drywall.
And I must say, it is interesting to watch the deconstruction of the bathroom.
On Monday morning I got up, took a shower, and went to work. I came home and there wasn’t a bathtub in the bathroom anymore and the wall had been stripped to the studs.
On Tuesday morning I got up, took a shower downstairs and went to work. I came home and while there was green board over the studs where the tub surround had been, there was no sink, no vanity, no mirror, no toilet, and no door. The floor underneath where the tub had been was stripped to the sub-flooring and the bathtub, the sink, and most of the toilet were in the garage. 😯
Weirdly, the shower curtain, the mirror, and the tank lid for the toilet are currently at rest amongst the chaos of Andrew’s upstairs study.
Oh, and my living room is covered in plastic because while David works on the bathroom Cass is working on the shelves in the living room. Everything is covered in dust. Tomorrow I’m going to have to move the coat closet into my study again because the insulation guys are coming back to figure out what is wrong with the can light in the upstairs bathroom. The plumbers from Bath Fitters are coming to install the piping and the valves for the shower, David will be ripping out the hideous linoleum, and I have to go and talk to the city of Normandy Park to figure out whether or not we can build the retaining wall across our north property line that will keep my front yard from eroding into the drainage ditch.
We are having SUCH fun. 🙄

One Response to “Remodel Week 6-9”

  1. Val Says:

    “I am disenchanted with Sears.”

    You have such the gift for understatement!

Leave a Reply

All comments containing hyperlinks are held for approval, so don't worry if your comment doesn't show up immediately. (I'm not editing for content, just weeding out the more obvious comment spam.)


All portions of this site are © Andrew Lenzer, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.