Field Report: No Sprayer With My Faucet! Rings On My Countertop!
by David Hawkins
September 1, 2008
Personal experience is the best way to help you
understand your customers’ remodeling needs.
Most of you about to read this description of my
remodeling adventure have heard the adage about the shoemaker’s children
needing new shoes. For the past 10 years, I’ve been hearing that same
comparison made regarding my own kitchen. Because I design kitchens and other
personal spaces for a living, it should be a snap for me, right? Let me tell
you, it is not an ordeal I want to repeat anytime soon!
People in our industry go to all these great trade shows, see all the fabulous
displays with exciting new products, and we get all jazzed up thinking about
projects we are working on. Naturally, the thought pops into our heads,
“Wouldn’t this be cool in my own house?” Of course we want our “dream projects”
to reflect our connection to this industry.
The Journey Begins
“What would it take?” is what I hear in the
recurring remodeling discussion in my own home. I respond, “A budget.” In my
head I calculate $30,000. After the paramedics leave, I hear, “How about
something on a smaller scale, NOT thedavidhawkinsway!”
Like a little kid kicking sand around the playground, I am resisting (in my
mind). After jousting back and forth, the scope of work is determined as
follows: new doors and drawers; new sink and faucet; new countertops with an
expansion of the top into the dinette area; and new hood for the
stove.
Now, after a much scaled-back wound on my home equity loan, my first rule was
to order everything possible before creating a bombsite in my own home!
Everything got ordered, with the longest lead item being the range hood — six weeks
out. With an E.T.A. for the items now established, a meeting with the
cabinetmaker was next.
Enter “Woody” who has done my cabinetwork for 30 years. This should be a walk
in the park, right? Well, not so much. Let’s just say, Woody didn’t always
return phone calls in a timely manner. Our goal was to give the existing
cabinets a facelift with new doors and drawers, then we would finish them to
match the custom buffet that Woody made a year earlier.
From Demolition To Installation
After taking everything out of the cabinets and
drawers, we set up a temporary pantry in our dining room with minimal supplies
to be able to use the kitchen during remodeling. Needless to say, our dining
room looked like a triage scene from “MASH.”
Time to install the new goodies for our semi-dream kitchen! First, the sink — a
cast-iron farmhouse-style sink — WOW! With this great new faucet with an oiled
bronze finish, it looks like it came right out of an old farm somewhere in
central Europe. After much effort altering the sink base to accommodate our new
“old” sink and faucet I hear, “Where’s the sprayer? I told you I MUST have a
sprayer!”
The bottom line: It was pointed out to me that I didn’t listen to “my client”
very well or I would have known how important a sprayer was to this remodel.
This may not seem like much of a dilemma, except for the fact that this faucet
did not come with a sprayer and our plans called for stone countertops. If we
wanted a sprayer we would have had to find one before the countertops were
fabricated. Now what? To make a long story short, I managed, after much
research, to find a sprayer from a different manufacturer that matched
perfectly. However, hooking it up was a whole story in itself!
Stone Countertops
Every dream kitchen has stone countertops. All
the professional chefs want stone countertops in their own homes. But now the
question: What do we use? Granite is probably the most practical and widely
used in our industry. However, for the look we wanted, marble was the way to
go. After all, many kitchens in Europe still have the same marble counters in
place after a century of use. These much-used counters may be beat up and
scratched, but they still look good and thus would fit our goal of an old
provincial European kitchen. Yes, marble has its drawbacks — it’s soft,
scratches easily, and it is porous and therefore stains easy.
After consulting with my stone guy, he reiterated what I already knew, saying,
“Don’t use marble, use granite.” My response to him was, “Everybody is using
granite; we want to be different.” I asked him about sealing the stone and he
indicated yes. He proceeded to tell me what he would use, but cautioned that it
has to be sealed periodically. The tops and backsplash were installed. Looks
great! We love it!
Let’s Celebrate!
Food, drinks, fun. We decided we would clean up
the kitchen the morning after we celebrated it almost being done — only to wake
up to find rings on the marble top that won’t go away! It’s kind of like
finding a ding on the door of your brand-new car. Oh no! Wait a minute,
remember? We wanted that old, worn look! But your eye just goes right to that
one spot …
Do the problems ever stop? Somehow, when I face these types of hurdles with a
client, they don’t seem so difficult. When we do projects for ourselves,
however, these snafus appear MAMMOTH!
This project took about six months start to finish. Many a time throughout I
felt like it was a second job. Every time I walked in the door, the unfinished
project was right there in my face after a tough day dealing with more of the
same. Now, in the aftermath of this project, I realize how much more I have to
learn with each and every project.
Though I don’t want to attempt this again, the results are still what I would
consider “a dream project.”
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