Monday, January 01, 2007

No Kitchen

I had a good laugh when I read the comment that La Gringa wrote to the blog about what had happened in 2006.....selling the house in Houston and starting a major kitchen remodel in San Miguel.

I did notice that you started out the year with two kitchens and ended up with none. Haha.

She is right. We still don't have a kitchen. I thought we would have one when we returned to San Miguel after Christmas but we don't and it is a long story.

The kitchen cabinets went in just a few days later than expected and then the granite company from Queretaro came to measure. They came back on Friday before we left to install the granite. While they were working la arquitecta, Ned and I went up to the studio to talk. After a while I slipped back down the stairs to see how things were progressing. It looked like the biggest piece of granite, the one with the sink was installed. The three guys were standing there in front of it and I went over to peak and see how it looked. They just kind of stepped back for me to see. No one said a word. No smile. Nada.

I stepped in between them.........Oh, NO! The granite was broken both in front of the sink and behind the sink. Now I didn't say a word. I just turned and went to get la arquitecta. They told her that they could repair it, it wasn't their problem, the area was too big. No, not acceptable. They are suppose to be the experts and they were the ones who decided where to put the seams for the granite. I didn't want "repaired" granite. La arquitecta called their office. The office agreed that "repaired" granite wasn't acceptable. They would cut another piece of granite. Of course they would have to do it while we were gone.

We left la arquitecta with the responsibility of getting the new granite installed and making sure that it was done correctly. They brought another piece of granite last week but now the hole for the sink was not cut in the right place and besides that they broke it again. She sent it back.

So it is true. We started 2006 with two kitchens and ended 2006 with out any kitchen. I don't know why I'm laughing along with La Gringa, but it really is pretty funny and if you can't laugh about stuff like this when you are living in Mexico, you're probably living in the wrong place.

1 comment:

La Gringa said...

Oh, no! I feel terrible now. I didn't know it was supposed to be finished while you were gone.

The same thing happened in our kitchen. I didn't tell you before because I didn't think it could happen to you and I didn't want to give you anything else to worry about.

First they cut (the longest piece) 6 inches too short! How could this possibly happen? Then they broke both the front and the back pieces cutting the hole for the sink.

We were not happy but we knew the chances of them returning from San Pedro with a third piece were non-existent, so they repaired the cracks. They did give us a little bit of a discount for that.

Because they had replaced the first piece and had repaired and given us a discount, we thought they were honest, so we made another contract with them to do some wood stairs. The owner of the company took our L.8,000. and never returned!

So we basically paid for all the mistakes plus a bonus and got cheated out of our money.