Photos of before and

Sorry, I would want that piece of countertop totally replaced.

I wonder if they could just fix the side piece.

To me, a "fair resolution" is to replace it at the contractor's expense, if it cannot be fixed so it's virtually invisible.

In our case, the counter installers damaged one of our cabinets. They tried to fix it but I was not happy with the fix. After a bit of discussion, they agreed it really wasn't an acceptable repair since it was fairly obvious, so they replaced the cabinet at their cost.

Sorry, I meant just replace the side piece (below the “seam”). It is probably not possible, though. The counter (or side piece) does need to be replaced unless you would be happy with some amount of money back.

Is that soapstone with a built up squared edge? If so be prepared for many more chips in your future. I think the repair could have been done better for sure.

"He doesn't know how it happened since he wasn't on site that day."

So is it fair to say that no one knows for sure how the top got chipped? Has anyone confessed? It's like a ring that turned up missing and the contractor was the only one who visited that day. Correlation is not causation.

I've had years of experience in the repair business and can tell you there is a direct positive correlation between the fussiness level of a chip repair customer and if the problem is not her fault. Had you dropped a cup and made that chip, that repair would be completely acceptable, believe me.

Of course you want new countertops to be perfect, however, yours are porcelain. You knew porcelain had to have a sharp mitered edge and you knew that sharp mitered edge was prone to chipping. This is just the first one; there are going to be many more. It's porcelain's biggest and most unsolveable downside.

As far as the quality of the repair, for porcelain, that's pretty darn good. Excellent background color match and perfect profile. I doubt it can be felt. Hit the white dots with a black Sharpie and it will be even better. You've got a big 'ole gray edge profile where they had to abrade through the picture on the top and edge anyway; it seems kinda silly to get upset about this. Especially knowing you've got more coming.

I'd send everyone an email saying you've decided to live with the repair for 6 months. If it still bugs you after that, you'll expect further resolution; if not, you'll consider that matter closed.

You should not pay full price if they damaged the countertop. The contractor is responsible to fix it to your satifaction or replace it. .

I have heard of Porcelain countertops, but I am not familar with how prone they are to chipping.

If chips will most likely happen down the road anyways, I might be willing to take a fair % as a discount instead of replacing the whole island.

Of course, if it is going to make you mad looking at that poorly repaired chip everyday, then you have every right to demand they redo the island.

ETA: I cross posted with Joseph. I trust he knows about the porcelain, and it sounds like they are prone to chips anyways. Your call, but I would be okay with the Sharpie, but only WITH some kind of a discount. No one would be walking away scott free with the good ole’ Sharpie method in my perfect kitchen! Lol!

There is a certain irony to these posts noting that porcelain is prone to chipping...

Since porcelain is apparently prone to chipping then your contractor, and those who your contractor supervises, would have been required to exercise extra care when working around them. Which just means now the contractor is all the more on the hook for the damage as it seems all the more foreseeable.

You don't really need an admission... The counters were not damaged, the workers came and then they were... no one is going to jail for this, so you don't have to prove fault beyond a reasonable doubt. In fact, since porcelain is apparently so delicate the fact that they were not protected while the workers were there is likely all the evidence you are going to need. Also, did the contractor pay for the chip repair?

As for the amount of the resolution... that really depends on your damages. If you can live with this patch and a discount, then do so. If you are going to replace the counter with new porcelain because it bothers you, then I guess that is the amount of the damages. If you do decide to use a different material I would advise a partial settlement somewhere in the middle.

The condo above me was getting work done that damaged my ceiling and the contractor admitted it. We arranged for his painter to repaint the ceiling. He did a great job, however, I had an item missing from my condo afterward. I jumped to the conclusion that since I noticed the item missing right after the painter painted, he must have stolen it. I notified the contractor, then had to apologize when I found the "stolen" item in glove box of my truck.

Following bry911's "reasoning", I didn't "really need an admission." The item was not missing, the worker came and then it was.

@Joseph Corlett, LLC - LOL... You consistently note how pro-consumer you are and then the first chance you get you defend the contractor with the worst analogy I have ever seen.

A few follow up questions. Did your contractor admit he was responsible or did the actual person who did the damage admit it to you? If that person had not admitted it, would your ceiling have not been their fault? I am sure you have just said... "Oh, the contractors are working above, but correlation isn't causation,"

The OP is not interested in who stole the chip, and if they suddenly find the chip when cleaning up that isn't going to change anything. If it turns out it wasn't chipped at all and the OP and the person who repaired it were both mistaken about it actually being chipped, then someone is going to have egg on their face... Your analogy is just bad because you are desperately looking for a reason to defend the contractor. If you are going to make the case to not hold the contractor responsible then you need to ask a lot more questions about why the OP suspects it was the contractor.

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Apparently porcelain is fragile enough that it should be protected. If the contractor had covered the counter in a protective material such as heavy cardboard or plywood, would he be in this situation? The contractor has a duty to take measures to prevent the counter from being damaged while workers are there. He didn't do that and therefore failed in a duty he had. That alone would probably suffice for preponderance of the evidence. However, if he also took responsibility for the chip repair, then he is going to have a hard time now disclaiming his responsibility... it is called a consciousness of guilt.

Again, this is not a criminal trial. The OP only needs to find who is more likely than not to have caused the damage. Of course, this does mean that a contractor might rarely be held responsible for something he didn't do, but that is just the cost of doing business and all businesses have to absorb those costs. Which is still better than a business always getting away with negligent damages because of an unrealistic hurdle of proof.

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BTW: If an item from the OP's home goes missing when the contractor shows up to replace the top... you have proactively given us something to think about before accusing the contractor.

bry911:

I'm not desperately defending the contractor; I'm desperately defending logic and fairness. The idea of slapping someone with a bill for something that they may not have done is much more unfair than a homeowner having to accept that sometimes you get screwed when the perpetrator is unknown.

" Did your contractor admit he was responsible or did the actual person who did the damage admit it to you? If that person had not admitted it, would your ceiling have not been their fault?"

The contractor was doing a floor replacement with leveling cement above me. I noticed a yellow spot in my ceiling and brought it to their attention. They made the connection between their work and my spot.

I'm glad you asked this. It shows that there are reasonable and fair people in this world. They screwed up and accounted for it. Sometimes it isn't as cut and dried as this which is why I asked the OP what evidence there is or if there's been a confession. If there is no evidence, only correlation, the benefit of the doubt goes to the accused. Innocent until proven guilty; I'm sure you've heard of it.

@Joseph Corlett, LLC - You didn't even ask if the contractor admitted it and took responsibility for it. You are clearly demonstrating the bias that you claim not to have.

Your immediate reaction was to look for the ways that a contractor might not have been responsible. If you were a neutral observer and concerned about fairness, you would have asked why the OP believes the contractor is responsible rather than asking about the evidence. How do you know that there is no evidence? Nothing the OP has said has indicated there was no evidence and if the contractor paid for the chip repair he already accounted for the screw up. All you are really saying in that case is it is fair to pay for your screw ups as long as they don't cost you too much money.

As to your other assertion. This is not correlation, that is not what correlation means... correlation describes a relationship (usually proportional) between two or more things. For example, suppose there was an increase in theft and a proportional increase in construction permits. Someone might mistakenly think that construction permits cause residential theft and then you might note that correlation is not causation. There are, in fact, spurious correlations.

You are claiming a deduction fallacy... e.g. if you open your door in the middle of summer and everything is wet, then it must have rained. That is not necessarily true, an army of watering trucks could have wet everything down and left right before you opened your door. If that seems preposterous, it is because deduction is imperfect but often reliable.

The weight for torts is not "the benefit of the doubt." it is preponderance of evidence which is just more likely than not. All you need to prove is that the most likely person to chip the counter was the construction crew working in the area... Who, for all we know, have already admitted to doing the damage. The OP certainly didn't indicate that the contractor hadn't taken responsibility, but if the contractor now denies the larger recompense and the OP needs advice, we have yours already loaded.

" You didn't even ask if the contractor admitted it and took responsibility for it. You are clearly demonstrating the bias that you claim not to have."

bry911:

While I admit I enjoy our back-and-forth, you don't get to put words into my mouth or make claims that aren't true. What part of "So is it fair to say that no one knows for sure how the top got chipped? Has anyone confessed?" do you not understand please? Clearly, I'm asking for evidence and you're saying I did not.

If the OP had a vido camera clearly showing the contractor chipping the countertop, I would be the first to tell that contractor that he has to do whatever it takes to make his customer happy. I've been in this situation several times, it sucks, however, just like the light bill, it's a cost of doing business.

"All you are really saying in that case is it is fair to pay for your screw ups as long as they don't cost you too much money."

I've said no such thing. I broke a front sink rail on a discontinued estone, but luckily got it repaired so inconspicuously that I dodged having to replace an entire kitchen. Did the same thing with some faucet holes I drilled improperly. One of these days, my luck's going to run out and I'm going to eat a kitchen. No problem; I won't whine. And neither should this contractor. On the other hand, he has no business eating a chip that isn't his.

@Joseph Corlett, LLC - It is important to distinguish between your belief and advice on dispute resolution. Your opinion, on "proof" doesn't matter, as it is not the standard for dispute resolution in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and many other nations.

If your neighbor occasionally hits golf balls that land near your home and you enter your basement one day to find a golf ball and a broken window in your home, then your neighbor is going to be held responsible for that damage. This is a very well adjudicated issue. Your neighbor engaged in reckless behavior (behavior that a reasonable person could see might cause damage) and there was damage. Even without direct proof, that neighbor is going to be held responsible.

This contractor supervised work around a material that is prone to chipping. If the material wasn't protected from chipping and ended up being chipped the contractor is going to be responsible. It doesn't matter who "confesses." That is the reality of our system and our system should form the basis for advice, regardless of how you feel about it.

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you don't get to put words into my mouth or make claims that aren't true. What part of "So is it fair to say that no one knows for sure how the top got chipped? Has anyone confessed?" do you not understand please? Clearly, I'm asking for evidence and you're saying I did not.

First, paraphrasing, summarizing or rephrasing is not "putting words in someone's mouth," That is just escalation for no real reason. Moreover, I didn't make the claim you noted. I said, "If you were a neutral observer and concerned about fairness, you would have asked why the OP believes the contractor is responsible rather than asking about the evidence." So I actually said your search for proof rather than information was evidence of non-neutrality. "Can you prove it?" is not how people investigate an incident... It is how people escape damages.

"I've said no such thing."

You said, "I'd send everyone an email saying you've decided to live with the repair for 6 months. If it still bugs you after that, you'll expect further resolution" So it seems you are saying that you believe that the resolution provided by the contractor will be satisfactory in six months, but don't believe the contractor should have to buy new countertops. So you seem to be OK with the contractor having the tops repaired but are asking for proof before replacement. Am I misinterpreting that?

bry911:

I believe in taking a comprehensive, fair, and cost effective approach to resolving this. It is important to separate the emotional from the practical. When you get new countertops, you expect them to be perfect; when they're not for whatever reason, you're experiencing the emotion of disappointment. It is my direct experience that while dissapointment will likely dissapate over time, the repair will not. I'm betting in 6 months, Jon will say "I don't even see it anymore."

Let's not forget the risks of replacement please. Suppose the new top comes in but the picture is slightly different and doesn't match the rest of the countertops exactly. So new tops are ordered to replace perfectly good tops to match, but that particular flavor has been discontinued and there is no more to be found. Now the entire kitchen has to be replaced with a flavor that isn't Jon's favorite all over a chip that would have mentally disappeared.

Who created the chip is nearly irrelevant, because Jon is going to be creating plenty of his own. It's the nature of this beast. He's going to get used to looking at repairs whether he likes it or not and to add iinsult to injury, he's going to have to pay for those. Considering the risks, he may as well start getting used to it now.

But, for Jon to agree to accept the ugly chip in his brand new counters, he should be offered a pretty significant discount.

It is my direct experience that while dissapointment will likely dissapate over time, the repair will not. I'm betting in 6 months, Jon will say "I don't even see it anymore."

This is immaterial. Over time we learn to live with many things, that doesn't mean we would have accepted those things in that condition when they were purchased. Go look at your car right now, if that car was delivered to you in that exact state when you purchased it, would you have found it acceptable at full price? Yet, you likely don't even see that place you spilled coffee on the seat, or that ding in the door today.

You could excuse an incredible amount of bad workmanship that way. You might not notice uneven grout lines in six months, scuffs and scratches in your newly installed floor will likely disappear into other scuffs and scratches that happen while you own the floor, the threadbare new socks just match the ones that are six months old now, etc.

We don't know for certain who caused the chip and the person who caused it may not even have been aware that they did it.

If this happened during a gathering of friends & family, what would you do?

Porcelain is quite fragile & has limited edge options with those options all being more susceptible to damage; the fabrication was not perfect. In the photos, it appears that the edge is a bit proud of the top. If so, the edge is even more vulnerable.

The homeowner knew that porcelain counters are delicate. And that workers were coming. The proactive, common sense thing to do is protect surfaces before workers are on site. Cardboard, duct tape, moving blankets, old comforters...all either free or really really inexpensive. Which would have avoided this damage instance IF it was caused by a worker.

I would accept the repair and move on. Learn how to make repairs yourself, invest in the repair kit or keep a repair specialist on standby. (If that is the completed repair, find someone else or DIY because that repair is far from good.)

I am a fabricator ... and I have been watching this thread with interest. I have personally been in the situation where a homeowner blamed my employees for something that may or may not have been due to their actions. If it's an easy fix we do it simply to get the issue resolved. Joe is absolutely correct when he asserts that a customers willingness to accept a repair is highly dependent on the assumed source of the damage. AS countertop guys we are often the last contractor in the house so often we get blamed for things that easily could've gone unnoticed until the dust settled and everything was done. Sometimes the customer claims damage when we KNOW it wasn't us. A reasonable person would be surprised at the antics some people will exhibit to try to place blame. If we're sure it wasn't us we push back as much as necessary. If the damage might be from us but somehow went unnoticed (unlikely) we'll try to accommodate the customer but we won't eat thousands of dollars of cost for something we don't think is a result of our activity. +1 for Joe's arguments.

i would accept repair and small discount. if this was your fault is there any chance in the world you would replace it? i doubt it. besides the expense it just seems incredibly wasteful, especially if more chips are bound to happen over time. it’s a bummer though for sure.

Completely agree with @Iharpie. I am always amazed how quickly people are to spend other peoples money, but not their own.

“As for those saying porcelain chips so I should just deal with it, how does this logic translate to other purchases? Cars dent easily. Should you "live with" a new car that the dealership dented while pulling it out of the lot?”

No, the dealership would use their in house bodyshop to repair the dent, and respray the quarter panel if that is what it takes for a good repair blend. They will not give you a completely different new car because of a dent!

There are varying levels of success in chip repair, because there are varying levels of artistic and technical skill. The best guy in town should be hired to revisit the chip repair. At the contractor’s cost. The best guy in town might not work for this fabricator, if that is his work.

You will never be able to ”unsee” the repair, because you know it is there. However, if a stranger to your home cannot tell that there is a repair, that is a good enough quality repair, and a good resolution to the situation. That ought to be an easy enough task, given that the chip is in the side of the counter. Good luck!

The current discussion is irrelevant. Legally speaking, you don’t owe yourself a duty of due care and so you can feel however you want about the damage that you do to your own stuff., I tend to repair the things that I damage, but you do you.

The contractor owes a duty of due care to the homeowner. Damage done to items in the home by the contractor is always a breach of a contractor’s duty of due care. The term for a breach of due care that results in damages is negligence.

The recompense for negligence is simple. You have to make the damaged party whole a.k.a. in the same position they would have been in had you not neglected your duty. The easiest solution is to offer a discount as a settlement. However, were the OP to pay for a different solution, such as replacement, those are his damages in fact.

I had a similar situation with a shower glass door. The doors were beautiful when installed (no chip) then workers came to install cabinets and the shower door got chipped. I called the glass company and they made a brand new glass door and installed it with no questions asked. Now that is good service!