Perspective

Let me start this post with a comment on perspective: in a project like this- it's easy to lose. You get caught up in the moment-to-moment drama, and forget to step back and look at the Big Picture. So before this post launches in to minutiae (which it will) I want to make the Big Picture perfectly clear: We Love Our New Kitchen. The layout is great- the look is really working for us, and the overall quality is right in the zone.

But (you knew this was coming) there are some nits to pick. To be fair, one is more than a nit- and I'll start with that.

The Island has the wrong sink. It just doesn't work. And it's not what we asked for. Plain and simple- the contractor screwed up. No other way to put it: we sent him the exact part number for the sink we wanted, and that's not what got installed. To make matters worse- it has physical incompatibilites with the faucet. To wit:


What some of you may notice (And I'm sure Blendergirl spotted this right off) is that the water is too close to the front of the sink. Any attempt to stick your hands, or a vegetable or anything else under that stream is a sure way to get wet shoes. And you notice how the top is granite? And how the faucet has already been drilled too? Yeah- that's a problem. The real bummer is that the sink we asked for is round, and while this sink is 10x12, and the one we wanted is 12" diameter- the current sink has a 14" diagonal. So the hole is too large. Problem.

What to do, what to do? Well, the yard has another slab from the same lot- but that's really a pain for everyone including us. And while we want the problem fixed, we aren't out to sink the contractor either. (ha ha)

Plus our designer has lobbied hard that the sink we wanted would still be too small for that faucet. Sherri didn't want to go bigger because she was concerned (obsessed?) with not losing counter space on the island. But after seeing everything in real life- she agreed that another couple or inches was just fine. So in the end, we found another rectangular sink that will fit the faucet better, be just big enough that we can re-cut the exisiting slab and still get plenty of workspace.

So some time next week or the week after, the island top will be removed, carted away, re-cut and re-installed. They are trying to do it in one day. I'm taking an awful risk- this had better work.