Diary of a Kitchen Remodel: Delivery

If there is one lesson I can take from my life, it's that things are never easy. No matter how well you prepare, no mater how much you plan, you cannot account for everything. The real key to success is to prepare, adopt a come-what-may attitude, and be ready to react to the unexpected quickly and calmly.

But that's not really my style. I prefer to prepare and then constantly worry and freak myself out about all the things that could go wrong. And when it came to the delivery of my cabinets, there were many things that could get screwed up.

But the one that kept me up at night fretting had to do with my building's elevator. They are quite Nazi-like here when it comes to the elevator. You must reserve it in advance for deliveries and you need to leave a deposit check in case you manage to damage the precious elevator. As soon as Kraftmaid (the company that manufactured my cabinets) called me to set up a delivery date, I went down to talk to the management office about the elevator. Turns out, someone had already reserved the elevator for that morning until 1pm for a move out. Whoops.

So my only option was to pray that my delivery window would fall in the afternoon, or that the person moving out would be willing to share. And then I found out that my delivery window would be between 10 and 2. Double whoops.

So Friday morning, September 11, dawned rainy and miserable. Around 9:00 Kraftmaid called and told me that they would definitely be coming between 10 and 11. So I began to hope that the person who would be moving would be delayed somehow and there would be no problem with the elevator.

Thankfully, the guys with the cabinets came on time, and by some miracle, the move-out had not yet begun, so there was no problem with me using the elevator. For about 20 minutes. Then the lady showed up with her U-Haul and was, shall we say, quite put out that the elevator was in use. I decided to stay (i.e. hide) in my condo so as to avoid a confrontation, and let the management office deal with her. After all, they were the ones who had locked down the elevator for me and let me go ahead and use it.

My dining room quickly filled up with boxes, and as soon as the delivery guys had departed, I cracked that shit open so I could check out the cabinets. And hurray, they look beautiful! Cherry with cinnamon finish, just as requested. Of course I haven't had a chance to look in all the boxes, but I'm going on faith here that the others look just as good.

My dining room = the box room.

And as I walked out of my apartment later that day to run an errand, I realized that the woman moving out was moving out from my floor. But since she's leaving the building, I don't really give a crap that she had to wait 10 minutes to use the elevator. There was a ton of stuff she could have done in the meantime, like stack her stuff at the elevator bay to speed things along. But instead she decided to delay my delivery-guys by bitching at them. Which means she is clearly not as adaptable as me, and that means I win!

A pretty, pretty cabinet.

Coming next: demolition day. Otherwise known as SMASHY SMASHY!