Good news, Bad news.

Ah... where do I begin.

How about with Tuesday night, when our kitchen was looking like this:

Brad and neighbor Joe were demolishing the old countertops in preparation for the new granite that was to be installed the following day.

All was going well... when from inside my office I heard an "Oh crap... you better come see this Jenna"... so I walked in to find this...

I still have no idea how it happened, but somehow in the removal of the countertops a pipe in the wall was broken and had to be surgically repaired from the dining room wall. That was our bad news.

The good news to this story is that I'm now finally forced to install the wainscoting I've been putting off for months in the dining room. Yay! That is our official Memorial Day weekend project and I can't wait.

Moving along...

Good news:

We have granite counters!!

Brad took a half day at work to watch and document the installation, which began with our lovely new sink (free with the counters!)

Here's the granite slab on the truck:

Yes, I know the faucet is crooked... this was pre-faucet installation!

I absolutely love the way it looks against the white bar cabinet. Pretty soon we'll have the rest of the cabinets painted to match!

Ok.... ready for the bad news?

This was not the granite we ordered.

Yep... somehow, they installed the wrong color. Brad was so busy documenting the process that he apparently didn't notice, but I knew as soon as I walked in the door.

Not that I dislike this color.. it was actually my second choice—the only thing that threw me off was the cranberry coloring. I wanted to stick with greys, blacks, tans and whites.

Here was the granite we ordered:

And here is the granite they installed:

You can't really tell from this pic, but those dark larger circles that kind of look like stains are in fact reddish.

This isn't much better due to the lighting and focus, but you can tell a bit more here...

We immediately called the granite company, who tried to tell us there was no way they made a mistake and we probably just saw a sample that didn't have any red in it. Uh, no dude, this is straight up the wrong granite.

So Brad has been back and forth on the phone with Lowe's and the granite company today trying to figure this all out. After they come and confirm it is in fact the wrong granite, we could get them to replace it.... but I would feel like a horrible person just wasting all that nice expensive stone. And, not that it really matters, but the granite we got was actually $52/sq ft. and we only paid $39/sq. ft for ours.

I guess we'll see what unfolds, but I'm hoping Lowe's will offer some sort of refund or credit to their store for making such a huge mistake (it actually wasn't their fault, it was the granite place, but it's their vendor and the contract is through them, so...)

But wait... there is more bad news!

Take a look at this picture and see if you can find the problem:

No, it isnt that we have no backsplash yet....

or that the salt and pepper shakers are arbitrarily placed on the stove...


Here's the issue:

The custom wine fridge cabinet was built at the standard 36" counter height to fit the fridge and line up with the stove, however our existing kitchen cabinets are only 34.25" tall for some reason. We did not know this until after the counters were installed.

Wop-wop.

The good news? The boys are in the kitchen fixing it as I type :) They are simply removing the cabinet from the wall, building a new base out of wood to fit the gap, and setting the cabinet on top of the wood pieces. Then adding a trim piece around the bottom to cover up the seams.

So that's it for this week! Our sink was just hooked up an hour ago so we are ready to rock and roll onto the next step... backsplash and floors. Which I still need to decide on. Ahh too much pressure.

But first we'll be figuring out a plan of attack for our new wainscoting in the dining room. I'll be back in a few days with the results. Happy 3-day weekend everyone!