I would tell her that you need to get moving and are not comfortable waiting any longer. Perhaps you could ask her to recommend someone else, and then slide in the question "is he working on your office project? Any chance that could be paused while he moves to our project? Because if not we might need to look at other options"

I think it is appropriate, and it doesn't have to be rude if asked in the right way. I'd ask nicely - what's the harm?

almost certain is not the same thing as certain !

I'd ask your designer to justify her reference in this guy who has failed to live up to expectations twice. Asking her to change her plans is fraught with problems.

What is the nature of your contract ? If you agreed to his time table, then you wait. Why not walk away from the deal?

Antss, we have no signed contract with the cabinet guy. Our GC could build the cabinets, but our guy is significantly less expensive and does beautiful work. My DH elected to do our project this way over my objections, and so I am going to let him deal with the schedule problem.

Sochi, I like your idea of asking our designer for some other references since her guy is not able to provide us firm dates. My DH is good at conversations like that and I think he'd like that approach.

Thanks.

So I guess I'm going to look at this a different way perhaps?

If he's cheaper AND better but he's running behind schedule, well, that feels kinda like a fact of life. (you know the old saying "you can have faster, better or cheaper pick two out of three...") I might consider walking away if it's totally blowing your time frame out of the water and you're waiting weeks and weeks between reschedules but I probably wouldn't.

What amazes me is that you want him to leave some other customers job unfinished so that he can start your job... insuring that he's going to be trying to split his time. Man, I'd give good money to have a cabinet guy (or any guy for that matter) that would stay until the project was done! I would consider it very rude if someone said to me, "Hey, I see mike is finishing tiling your shower but I'm next in line so what if he leaves your shower partially complete so he can come work on mine?" In fact, I think I'd be likely to give a very rude response back.

Just my thoughts.

Morgne, I get it, I wouldn't want this guy to leave my job unfinished either. But the designer really sells this guy to her clients and right now she's the one who's monopolizing his time. It seems like a conflict of interest to me. And I really don't know if he's on her job site getting additional assignments as she thinks of them, or just trying to perfect what he originally agreed to build for her.

I realize that time is money, in both directions. I was really clear with DH when we were hiring contractors that schedule was king to me. As we are paying a high rent while we wait for our house to be finished, at some point the money we save by hiring this guy is just going to go straight to our landlord. He wanted to save on the GC's fee by subbing out the cabinets himself, so now DH gets to be the GC and bug the cabinet guy until he gets his a$$ over to our project.

I think I'd have to agree with Morgne--if your designer is using this guy, first of all, it's proof she likes him, but she's a customer like you. It'd be best to get another cabinet builder or be patient. (Hopefully) she signed on for her job before you did and everyone is just taking their turn.

And it seems like you knew he was notoriously difficult to schedule--a shame he had to prove it, but I don't think you can blame the designer for using him too. For letting him repeatedly postpone the job, yeah that could be her fault if she's in charge of scheduling, but you can't fault her for just being a customer.

Still, it might be fun to ask her if she's using him and how long it took to get him scheduled. And if she isn't using him, who IS she using because you need someone else!

I'm with you guys on that one. I'd definitely ask if she can recommend someone else. If nothing else it's worth it to talk about how agravating it is that he's behind schedule! She should really know how much of a problem it is for you. That way maybe she can think twice about her recommendations.

Yeah, sometimes you can save a penny to spend a dime. We've discovered that time and time again. 3 years into our remodel we haven't had a working kitchen in pretty much all that time... if you assume 500 bucks a month extra then I'm looking at having spent at least what? FIFTEEN THOUSAND dollars extra on food during that time. UGH. It gives me a headache to think about it. Im too weird and demanding to have just gotten a sub to begin with but if saving the point.... Well.

Hopefully it will all work out and that beautiful cabinetry will make you forget the delays!!!