Chapter 2: Kitchen Renovation

I was on cloud nine after a meeting with our financial advisor. He officially gave us his blessing on a kitchen renovation. Not that we had to ask his permission, but we’re both financially responsible and this was going to be a large hit to the ole’ savings account. Like I said in chapter 1 of our kitchen renovation post, it’s good to have a vision before planning, but it’s also good to know you have the financial resources to back-up those ideas.

So with my vision and our finances in order, we headed to Home Depot to get started on the process. We agreed we needed to meet with at least three kitchen contractors and obtain quotes before making a decision. Home Depot seemed like a good place to start…or so we thought.

We sat down with of the Home Depot designer at the back of the store to not only schedule a time for someone to come out to the house and take measurements, but also to place a granite order for our half bathroom counter (more on that later). He took the order, told us someone would be calling in a few days to schedule the measurements and gave us two invoices. So off we went to run other errands around town.

More than a week went by and still no call from Home Depot. So we stop by customer service and found out we were suppose to take our invoices to the check-out area for processing. I guess this was a “duh” on our part, but we were both slightly irritated that the designer did not mention this to us during our meeting.

A few days go by and I finally get a call to schedule the measurements. That thankfully happened without a hitch and I was one step closer to the fun part...or so we thought.

After the invoice confusion, we thought it best to just meet with a different kitchen designer at Home Depot. New designer, fresh start. I scheduled our official design appointment and I was beyond nervous and excited. I could not wait to discuss my vision and ideas with a design expert so we could collaborate and design the most fabulous kitchen ever. That’s the best part – right?

Armed with my kitchen magazines and carefully marked pages of things I liked, we sat down with the designer to get started. Imagine my surprise when she didn’t ask me any questions and just jumped right into her computer design program and started to mock-up the exact lay-out of our current kitchen.

I think maybe three total questions were asked:

1. What cabinets did we want? (no discussion on which line would work best for our needs)
2. What style cabinets did we want? (no discussion on the various options and cost differences)
3. Did we want an island? (no discussion on the different design options)

So we left the store with a quote and a mock-up of our current kitchen design with an island added. We both sat in the car and looked at each other with an expression like “what the heck just happened here?” Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed – that wasn’t fun at all! There was definitely a severe lack of customer service especially when we’re talking about dropping a boat load of money on a new kitchen.

But at least we had a quote and it was a starting point. We still had two other kitchen contractors to visit and I was hopeful we’d get better service. There is only one way go – right? Stay tuned!