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JaysPolitics

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Location: Takoma Park, Maryland, United States

I'm now a 52-year-old American male raised as an Episcopalian, veteran of submarines, Peace Corps, and State Department. I like teaching people about what they can do with computers and have gotten by as an independent Microsoft trainer teaching networking, but I really hope to someday find a way to make a living traveling on my motorcycle, camping, and writing about places and people I meet along the way.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Susan's Kitchen

The refinancing went through. Susan paid her attorney fees related to warding off her father's foreclosure. Eight thousand dollars poorer, in the end, she still stuck to her goal. New windows would lower energy bills. She also wanted a new kitchen.

Karin and I both suggested to her to hold off on the kitchen until she had a full-time job. We both recommended that she keep some funds in reserve. Instead, she committed every last dime. Well, there wasn't money for the floor or the sink or the plumbing, but she has been working to save money for those things.

She spend many days at Home Depot. They sent somebody to measure the kitchen. She hired contractors who gutted the existing kitchen, closed up a door, and put in dry wall. Then they started to assemble the new cabinets. Well, it turns out that the kitchen doors are not big enough to let the new corner cabinet in. The contractors told her that they wanted $2,000 more to knock out the back window in the laundry room, widen the back door to the kitchen, bring the corner unit in then clean everything up.

She says that she called Home Depot and they refused to do anything about the error. Meanwhile, the contractors discovered that Home Depot did not measure correctly and one counter is 3 inches to long on one wall and another is 3 inches too short on the other.

Strikes me that they were here to measure and should have not only gotten the counter's measured correctly but measured the doors and planned as to how to get the corner unit in: maybe by bringing it in in pieces and constructing it on-site.

Two-thousand dollars is more than she has. She agrees to $800 for them to knock out the back window, bring the corner cabinet into what is now the laundry room and replace the windows. Then she has spent this weekend widening the door herself using an electric gardening saw and a hammer.

I'm upset that she did not get Home Depot to pony up and fix the problems that they have created. I am sure there are people who know more about widening doors in load bearing walls than she or I do. I look at the hole in the wall with the many sawed-of two-by-fours and am sure that it is going to be difficult to repair.

She's convinced that it is impossible for her to get Home Depot to fix the situation. Apparently, they stopped returning her calls. However, I'm at a loss for how they could since she has no direct line at the place were she is temping.