I got a note someone had commented on this old post. Interesting to read the old 'news.' It is kind of interesting to read the comments people made regarding patience and being 'nice' to suppliers. I tend to give people one chance, then invoke the nuclear option. I learned way back you get what you accept and hold people accountable to their word. Probably a USMC thing. Ya'know, bring a gun to a knife fight, bring a bigger gun to a gun fight, bring a nuke in any other situation. You get what you accept. Looking at my situation it was my fault, assuming the supplier had integrity, and Lowes would act quickly to resolve a problem that should never had occurred. The Lowes rep said I had to pay up front, which is when I should have walked out. Live and learn. My wife says I do not like the work other people do, and in general she is right. In 30 years of living in my house, rebuilding from the studs out, there are a few things I have not personally completed: Install wall to wall carpets, install the counter tops, put in a new electric service panel, glass shower enclosure Counter top story is here, the carpet guys had to redo a shoddy seam, the electric guy, middle priced quote out of 4 was perfect. The shower guys took out their work because they did not like how they did the job, I didn't have to ask. My wife comments on 'her' plumber, painter, ceramic guy, sheet rocker, cabinet maker, window installer, roofer, electrician, finish carpenter, deck builder, masonary guy, hardwood installer and finisher. She is right when she says I do not like how most people work. When I got to people's homes to see work done, I am warned to not comment. But even now my wife says things like 'why did they accept that work?' Anyway, a couple of 4 year later comments on Curava counter top material. The counters are nice, durable with a couple of exceptions. Since the stuff is manufactured with ground up glass it does have some possibility of chipping along any edges and even in the field of the stuff. We have a couple of spots where small pieces of glass have chipped out. I repaired one or two by cleaning, filling the small ship with clear epoxy, then trimming with a razor blade. Worked fine. One other issue I would caution customers with. Every here and there we have pieces of blue glass mixed in with our brown and amber colored glass chips. If you do not look closely, you would not see them but I would recommend a very thorough, complete agreement before installation and a close inspection of the surface after install or of the tops before they are installed. Maybe that manufacturing problem has been fixed. I think they may have a few more color choices now so I guess its possible for more color schemes to get mixed at the factory.

Here are a some pics and my dilemma. Keep in mind this is my old fridge...new one comes today! Here is how we ended up with this: I have never had an enclosed fridge so didn't think about the peninsula dying into panels or how deep panels were going to be. I "semi" designed the new footprint and took it to Lowe's where the KD took over. (yes---I know......) Bought Schuler plywood with maple fronts cabinets. Although the kitchen designer had the model number of the fridge we were buying, which is a full-size, she designed the kitchen with 24" deep panels. She knew I was trying to have the look of an enclosed fridge. Being that I've never had an enclosed fridge, it was something I just didn't think of until the install started. Evidently she put a counter-depth in the design program because the elevation sketches she gave me showed an enclosed fridge. "Luckily" the panels actually came in wrong and were cut at only 23" for some strange reason and the installer caught it right away when looking over everything. Otherwise he probably would have installed them and I would be stuck. So called Lowe's to reorder the panels and somehow in all this it suddenly dawned on me that a full size fridge was going to be deeper and require deeper panels. I thought "no problem! Yay I can order them at 30!" By this time the KD had quit her job due to the pandemic. The other KD didn't know what was going on so we called in the Schuler rep. She was the one who immediately told me that those 30" panels would be sticking out in front of the peninsula. She asked if we could move the peninsula forward since the other side is an overhang for seating, but we couldn't since it would bottleneck the entrance into the kitchen down to under 36" and getting rid of an existing bottleneck was one of the reasons for the re-design to start with. So we had a dilemma. We cannot go down to a counter depth fridge which was the other option. What I decided was to split the difference and order 27" refrigerator panels. The fridge without doors is 29.5" so I will have about 3" of the side of the fridge sticking out which I don't like, but while I want my kitchen to look beautiful, I value the functionality too. The old fridge that you see in the pic sticks out a total of 32" The new fridge will stick out 34 with doors but without handles (4.5" of that is doors that would stick out anyway) Here's the really complicated part....we will be installing decorative panels on the end of the fridge as we have them on all the cabinets. This is how you enter the kitchen and I don't want that big blank space there next to the peninsula. The panels should be installed with just 1/4" reveal. I posted a photo below of how the panels look that are already installed on the side of the pantry that adjoins to a 17" high window seat. Luckily those face the opposite way from the fridge panels so you will never see both at the same time. I also posted photos of us holding up panels on the side of the fridge (they are NOT the right size panels...we have to order those still---we just used these to look at the right edge as to how wide to make the panels.) Also keep in mind we can remove the quartz backsplash piece if that would look better. That was not originally planned...the panels were going to sit directly on top of the countertop. So do we order the panels with just the 1/4" reveal to match the panels in the rest of the kitchen? Or, as the Schuler rep recommended, order the panels so they are the same width with the countertop, leaving about 1 3/4" reveal on the right side, but then your eye follows the countertop all the way up. I asked the countertop templater guy if I should just lengthen the overhang on the kitchen side of the peninsula to 2.5" to bring it out to within 1/4" of the fridge panel but he said no....I'm now thinking I should have insisted on it. Especially since we have full overlay cabinets that already make the overlay look very small since the 1.5" planned overhang is measured from the box, not the front of the drawers. Note how small the overhang looks to the drawers. And then of course, they had templated for a 1.5" overhang and I only got 1.25" UGH! Every quarter inch there would have made the reveal on the side of the fridge less. Suggestions appreciated! I'm hoping that I will eventually make peace in my mind with this issue and won't notice it but it is driving me crazy right now. I think of all the things that screwed up just because of this one error by the KD that I didn't catch and I am beating myself up for it!

Home Depot doesn't charge for Cambria by the slab but by the square foot. They argue that this saves you money, but it occurred to me that such a policy might also lead a fabricator who didn't have immediate access to a matching slab to take a piece from another slab, one he THOUGHT looked the same to him. We all know opinions vary but THIS LOOKS HORRIBLE TO ME FROM THE GET-GO, obvious NOT a match. It's not a match either because it doesn't come from a matching slab OR the rt. hand one is turned UPSIDE DOWN from the other. There is an interesting post on Viatera Soprano which many of us followed: the customer kept staring at the quartz that she had put on the large backsplash. Something was wrong, Yep: When he cut the slabs for the backsplash, the top and bottom of each piece were opposite of one another.

Particulates often pop out during fabrication...nature of the beast. Cutting granite isn't like cutting thru butter. lol The slabs with the mesh backer are typically more prone to this....or that's what I've been told. The mesh is there for a reason. I have a display top in my showroom that shows a RIVER of popped out particulates that was filled. My fabricator said it was excessive and offered to replace it. I wanted my clients to be able to see what can happen with stone so I said we'll keep it. Granite pros, in your opinion, whats the percentage of slabs that have been filled? I'll try to post a pic of our display. It's crazy!