The island has been installed!  It was actually completed and installed about a month ago but we still haven’t finished reorganizing the storage in the kitchen.  Scroll down to see the finished project.

It has transformed our kitchen from the vast open space with not-enough storage to a well-defined kitchen with much more storage and a separate eat-in area. If you could hear me now, what you would hear is a big sigh from contentment at the improvement!

All that fabulous-ness being said, let me stress the importance of staying on top of your contractors.  I don’t know if it is the slower pace of life around here in the Shenandoah Valley, or the general sense that everybody knows everybody (or at least some if their kin), but contractors around here have some very strange habits.

Habit one: Poor communication.  I have several times called upwards of a half-dozen companies to get quotes for various projects, only to get a call back from maybe one-third.  That is pathetic!  I, too, run a small business, but it is a rare occasion when I do not respond to an inquiry from a potential customer (or secured customer, for that matter) the same day, but certainly within 24 hours.    Tip for contractors:  Return calls.  Return emails.  Find out the preferred mode of communication for your customer and be responsive!

Habit two: Poor scheduling.  This one actually goes hand-in-hand with poor communication, but on more than one occasion (and with multiple contractors), I have found myself waiting, at the appointed time for a meeting, only to have to call the main office to find out that someone is running late, or that somehow the appointment was not correctly scheduled and I’ve wasted my time.  Just because someone doesn’t have a regular 9-5 job doesn’t make their time less valuable!

Habit three: Assumptions.  These are the most bizarre I have encountered yet, but contractors tend to make very strange assumptions about projects for which they are hired.  Case in point:  I asked to see our cabinets once they were complete in the shop, before they were ready for installation.  When I was shown to the cabinets that had been completed for our kitchen, I was shocked to find they were too short.  The contractor had (per his own admission) assumed that our cabinets were standard height, even though he had been in our kitchen and measured them!  It turned out that they are slightly taller than standard, meaning the new cabinets were going to be too short for our kitchen.  Fortunately, this was easily remedied and the install occurred on time and without any additional issues.

Hello, storage space!