I don't know where you are - or what the mechanics liens laws are where you live - but check into them. You don't want to pay your contractor - and then find out you have to pay twice (because the materials providers weren't paid). I live in Florida - and it is a very strict state when it comes to workers and the providers of materials being paid. Is very easy to wind up paying twice. Robyn

*thank you* Tress. Gosh am I fragile -- I'm buffeting back and forth with your-all's flagellation of my stupidity. But you are right, Tress: I did do what I did not in complete isolation from the market or sensibleness or *sense*, not to mention research about these folks. But of course a mistake will be devastating and mistakes do happen. And so I am nervous. To say the least. And likely gullible and insufficiently tough, though not an idiot, I hope (though I recognize this may just be wishful thinking to state as much). These folks are a local bigger-than-one-person cabinet company, run by a local macher who hails from abroad and does business fluently in more than one country. For better or worse. He has kids whom he involves in his company and listens to, hence a latter-day awareness of environmental concerns. He is a businessman, clearly and unabashedly so and upfront. And while I am uncomfortable being hard_as'd about any of this (I am decidedly, and explicitly and consciously *not* a businessman), I have on a few occasions stated a need of mine and found him surprusingly amenable to negotiation. Even in this hard economy, this isn't a sure response. Thus installation and cabinetry is intertwined because at one juncture I received a price which after negotiation included installation. But the price had been derived from cabinetry alone, and with reworking, as subsequently happened, things continued to be priced as cabinetry. Thus essentially in some sense, the installation is free. Not really, of course, as installation is his own separate company, but still part of the same family, etc. You see? Complicated. And a little tricky to parse apart the numbers. But then most importantly is what Tress so acurately and kindly points out: I worked hard to make a decision whom to hire and that decision includes an implicit as well as explicit trust. I agree that the trust should be two-way and I agree that 100% is too much for me to front. But in all honesty, I know more about them than they do about me. I can't say that what I know about them I always know what to do with, but, well, on many fronts the company seemed a safer bet and/or deal for me than another. While I'm *terrified* I've done wrong, it wasn't through absence of diligence. I can't explain why they ask this unusual demand of full payment upfront and I can't explain why they insist this is standard practice in their industry. It is not my sense from my own 'research' that it is and clearly it is not the experience of those on this board. I do not know whether it is untrue that they have "always done this" (well, maybe I do or they wouldn't have wound up with 2 full unpaid-for kitchens in their warehouse ... but what should I do, call the guy a 'liar'?) nor do I know what company this KD was formerly with that they charged similarly. I don't know enough about this whole world of custom cabinetry to know whether there is a little corner of it in which full payment is standard. FWIW this is most definitely a town where there are "an annoying number of millionaires". Only around here, millionaires don't even rank. So this isn't a single-workman's shop, it's a small, locally-run factory. I opted for having some diversity of constructors such that I would not be dependent on the flu-status of a single worker. This seemed safer and potentially faster; we're so tired of being without a kitchen around here! The emotional strain is taking its toll. Moreover the decision would appear to be saving me quite a bit of money. None of this has actually come to pass of course, but a piece of me wonders whether the apparent 'cash-strapped' behaviour of this company couldn't be therefore to my advantage price-wise. That is, I presume some of the reason the guy was willing to come down in his price as much as he was was a certain desperation for my cash. That's the implication of such negotiations. So I did negotiate as best I could; everyone's got their tipping-point. I at this point have invested a lot of time in the company as well as my "design retainer" and want to get through the process. They want the cash; more of it than less. But I didn't want them to walk away so I was unable to negotiate more than 75% down. While my error comes in not having established the peculiar price structure before becoming committed to them, it didn't come from an absence of negotiation or effort in coming to a decision to trust them. My Dad told me that in being a patient the time to be skeptical of a physician was in the time when you're choosing between them, but having once decided to go with one physician's protocol, you will then have chosen whom to trust and your recourse to skepticism should be curtailed. Having chosen whom to trust, then trust them. (True, he died following this advice but I don't think it's causally related - advanced pancreatic ca). So I dunno. But I will officially think no more of it since what's done is done. I do think I'm being treated OK apart from this bizarre matter of the payment schedule. Remind me please why I thought renovating was a good plan?

We worked with a well-established local custom cabinetmaker, a mom-and-pop shop. The cabinets, including installation, were around $55,000. We paid one-third upon signing of the contract / approval of design (this was in November '07), then monthly payments (~$5,000) until installation was completed to my liking. Things were d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g toward the end (although to be fair, compared to many others we had it incredibly easy). They understood I was waiting to make final remuneration until everything was done but did ask me for at least half of the final payment (again, ~$5,400) -- I refused. I'd been burned before and while they probably wouldn't have left me hanging I just did not want to find out! The day he came to finish everything I handed him a nice fat check and we were both happy. So it was one-third down, monthly progress checks in approximately equal amounts (to the final payment).

You have the right to be made whole. Take note of the delay, and that is now your ace in the hole for the rest of the project. If anything else has an issue, you get to say, “I’ve been very reasonable about the 4 week delay in my project, but that almost used up my stock in patience. Can we fix this issue a bit faster?” You have credit in the bank for that if you act reasonable and kind. No one wants to mess things up. Everyone hates making mistakes. Big mistakes make you die a little inside. It’s especially bad when it costs all of the profit on this job, and the next, to fix. They are beyond not going to make money. They will lose more than they could have possibly made on the job. Cabinets are expensive, and margins are not huge. And they are doing the right, painful, thing. They deserve a glowing review for handling the issue with integrity. But, like any job, you always wait until it is done to talk about the total assessment of how things go. Every contractor needs to hear their real world review, directly, at the end. After assessing the whole process as a whole. And not just the current pickle.