A little about my kitchen, and a lot of me complaining about my counter experience.
I've lived here 6 months. I have had 3 different counter tops.
- Dark Granite (from when I bought the house)
- White Italian Marble (for the renovation, but was completed with shotty work)
- White Cashmere Granite (which a replacement for the marble, and my final counter)
- White Italian Marble (for the renovation, but was completed with shotty work)
- White Cashmere Granite (which a replacement for the marble, and my final counter)
This kitchen never had awful counters, but fixing them up for the kitchen remodel has been hell. When I bought this house, the kitchen had dark granite counters that wouldn't fit the new kitchen configuration, so I needed to have them replaced. I don't have much counter space, so my contractor recommended me to someone who may have had some excess product from larger slabs/projects in hopes I could get the best price on stone material.
When I arrived at my scheduled time at the granite lot, the granite guy (gg) wasn't there yet. His employee told me he would be back in about an hour and that I was welcome to wait. I told him no thank you and left. GG called me when I was about 5 minutes away from his shop and begged me to come back to him and that he would be there in about 5 minutes too. I should not have turned my car back around. But I did, and he was not there in 5 minutes. More like 10-15 minutes.
While on the granite lot, I found one granite and one marble that I liked. The gg told me that if I chose the granite, then I would have a seam down the middle near the sink. I didn't want that because I don't have much counter space anyway, so I chose the marble. The marble was installed in the middle of January.
Wait a minute... why is there a seam down the center of the marble? And what is that irregular black mark? Oh that's just a fuck up that the counter guy made and tried to play off as my counter top.
I texted GG and reminded him that the way he presented the two stone options to me was that the marble would NOT have a seam... which is what I paid for. But instead I received marble that did have a seam.
And then, when my plumbing was hooked up, I found this. My sweater got snagged on this fragment of stone. Also, what is that trajic brown stain along the edge? This is what ultimately pissed me off. The dude tried to pass off a hack job as my marble counters.
He didn't immediately respond to me (via phone calls and texts) until I e-mailed him letting him know that I only wanted to have documented e-mail conversations with him. Then he started calling me non-stop... which is not the communication I wanted. He did however agree to come back out to take measurements again (why doesn't he have this stored somewhere?) to replace my counters with granite. I either wanted my counters replaced or I wanted a reimbursement. He didn't want to reimburse me, so he just prolonged giving me a new counter.
At one point, he told me to come check out the granite on his lot when the weather got warmer. And I told him absolutely not. It was February and I didn't want my kitchen to have unfinished business until the spring. There were so many details in between such as him NEVER being on time that I will just leave out or else we will be here forever.
Come MAY, (yes, MAY), when he was going to replace my counter, I took personal time off from work to meet him at my house from 1-3 after I confirmed with him our appointment that very morning. He never arrived until 4:45. And then when he was ripping the old counters off, he ripped the plumbing off the pipe too - and never acknowledged that he ruined the plumbing work underneath. My brother was (is- because this is still current) so pissed that he ruined his plumbing work, that my brother is contacting him about it. And because my brother never agreed to fix the entire plumbing job under the sink and hasn't had time for it, I have been without a sink again for about a week. Depending on how the correspondence goes with my brother, we will see about adding his name here.
OH - he also tried to con me into buying a new sink for $100. I didn't realize this at the time, but while replacing the counters, he was going to have to replace the sink (because the sink was glued on to the counters). But he made it sound like a nice bargain that he was adding on for me. He was a snake, because he knew he had to replace it anyway and was trying to get me to pay more for his mistake! Thankfully, I told him no every time he asked me if I wanted to buy a new sink.
These were my overall impressions he left me with:
- I was someone who was buying his remnants of whole slab that were already paid for by richer people with bigger kitchens; I was last of his priorities.
- Oh and I am a girl, so of course I am dumb and I don't understand the construction world.
- Why was I complaining? He did so many favors for me.
- Why don't I know that traffic exists in the world which makes people late to every single one of their prior obligations by at least an hour?
- Did you know 5 minutes away means 30 minutes away?
If you are local to Milford, CT and are curious about which company I went through, please e-mail me. I don't intend to hurt peoples' livlihood, but my experience with this company has been awful!
Do you like the marble or granite counters better?
