Damn Yankees.

Did I tell you we were considering keeping the original cabinets in the kitchen and just painting them? They are heavy, solid, nice cabinets…but they are also old, dirty, and dingy. Trying to reuse them would have been a great way to save some cash, but since we were redoing everything else in the kitchen (i.e. gutting every inch) we decided to start fresh with brand new cabinets, too.

Choosing cabinetry is tough, and of all the decisions we’ve made in the past few months this was the most frustrating. You need to know that in order for me to relive the horror of this summer’s cabinet catastrophe I have had to write this entry with a bowl of peanut butter M&Ms by my side.

It was THAT awful.

For the master bath in our old house, we used a local cabinet maker and they did an outstanding job. Naturally, we sought them out again for our kitchen. Advice- find a good local cabinet maker. Don’t know of one? Ask your contractor. The one we like- Maxwell Cabinets- has been family owned and operated for the past 60 years and they’re fantastic to deal with. We have always really enjoyed working with them. Butttt…they can be a little slow. And with a baby on the way and a house that wasn’t livable, this summer was no time to be slow. The other issue? Price. We were really trying to save a little green on this project so we were forcing ourselves to look exclusively at their least expensive line- a line which didn’t give us the color we wanted (chocolate brown) or anything nearly close. *sigh* So we chose the big guys at Home Depot instead.

Big mistake, but we didn’t know it yet. This is when the whole thing went to ‘pot. Get it? Depot? ‘Pot? Pot? (I’m can be clever even when I am reliving moments from Hell.)

When we went to the ‘pot, we found the style we wanted, the color we wanted, and the price we wanted- and they promised we could have it all in 14 days!

You know when your mother tells you that if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is?

Cue your mother.

See, when you get your cabinets from a place like Home Depot, you’re not really getting them from Home Depot, but from a third party vendor. When the third party vendor decides to mess up your order, oh, say, FIVE times and to not give Home Depot or you a straight answer on anything (Will our cabinets arrive today? Who knows! Consult the Magic 8 ball!) you can only shake your fist at the person on the other end of the phone above the Mason Dixon line.

Damn Yankees.

Our order didn’t arrive in full until about 6 weeks later, and the things wrong with the small shipments they sent us along the way ranged from insignificant scratches to the truly ridiculous (Who packs these shipments? Monkeys?). Seriously- there were huge gashes (holes the size of my fist) in the sides of the cabinet boxes, doors that didn’t match (did the packer even LOOK at the cabinet before he put his quality control sticker on it?), doors that we didn’t order (um, thanks for the extra doors, guys!), and an extra base thrown in just for kicks (maybe they figured if they just threw cabinets at us some were bound to work?).

I need more M&Ms.

I have to say, though- the people at Home Depot in customer service were outstanding. Not only did they ultimately refund some of our money, they were a pleasure to work with the whole way through, completely professional, and deeply apologetic. And to my knowledge they don’t work with that cabinet vendor anymore.
And the good news is that in the end we got what we initially requested (perhaps they had someone with a third-grade education read over our order?) and the cabinets looks great. You’ll hear more about them, but our two favorite workers, Freddie and Ceasar, did a fabulous job installing the cabinets and we’re very pleased with our new kitchen.

Maybe it wasn’t a full-blown assault on Tara by Yankees in uniform, but one thing is sure:

As God is my witness, I will never work with a third party vendor again.