What Was I Thinking? (Part 4)

This is where I can really start giving out useful advice. First of all, have a good idea of what you really want to do. Granted, each sales person that comes to your home will start offering ideas that you will not have considered. This may actually become a problem as it did for us because each successive salesperson gave us new ideas to consider. Early on in the process our rectangular island became L-shaped. Then we added an idea my brother had first come up with, extending the pantry into the dining room. Of course, if we were going to expand into the dining room we'd have to have all of the old paneling removed and the ceiling scraped of the acoustic cottage cheese.

The first guy who came out didn't actually offer a lot of ideas of his own, though he was exceptionally pleasant. With him we seemed to talk more about materials, countertops, cabinet pulls and suck. I managed not to choke visibly when we saw his initial estimate. He then knocked it down 20% and a little more because we were looking to start work in January, typically their slow season. Even after those reductions it was still outrageous but at least it gave us a good benchmark.

In retrospect I feel sorry for the second guy who came out, a nice Russian guy who we met at the Home Show. He came out one evening and while he was here Wife and I kept coming up with lots of off-the-wall idea, like adding extra cabinets above where the island is going be. That was also the first time Wife even mentioned the idea of getting a new oven and refrigerator. I'd never even heard of the idea of "counter-depth" refrigerators before. So here's this poor guy listening to our stream of consciousness ideas followed by me going crazy at the idea of spending even more money to replace perfectly working appliances. We weren't surprised that he never called us back with his final estimate.

The next three estimates came from another company we met with at the Home Show, another company we initially met at the home show but whose rep lives in our townhouse complex and has done over 30 kitchen here, and a company who just opened a storefront down the street from us that seems specialize in the inexpensive $5,999 kitchens you see advertised in the newspaper. We'd finally reached a consensus on the cabinet layout, countertops, floor and wall tile/backsplash.

The three estimates were pretty close to each other and each option had it's positives and negatives.

• The guy from our complex, Sol, a compact Israeli with the strongest handshake I've ever encouintered, came in with the highest total bid, and was compounded by the fact that he didn't take credit cards, so that meant our 5% credit card rebate would be moot except for the things we had to buy ourselves. Also some of the work would be sub-contracted, though Sol would still supervise everything.


• Johnny, the Armenian from the store down the street was very amenable to every idea we had and gave us some great ideas for the floor and backsplash, but we were concerned because his company's experience was most putting kitchens in new houses but very new to doing renovations.


• Alex, a Russian with a very thick accent, had the lowest bid. It seemed nothing we suggested was a problem. Add a canister light over the wet bar? No problem. Add a separate wall switch for the under-cabinet lighting? No problem.

We called each candidate out an extra time to review everything down to the last detail. We checked everyone online with the BBB and California State Contractors Board. Note that it is very difficult to compare estimates when they don't all cover exactly the same items. All that was left to do was choose who'd get the job...