If its not one thing, its another

Have you ever done a large construction project? Heck, have you ever made any kind of plan in your life?

If you have, you know that nothing ever goes as planned. Ever.

Our little construction project was progressing nicely with lots of happy surprises, and then we got a less happy surprise- because not all things can be lollipops & unicorns and free money falling from the sky.  Just to be clear, no free money is falling from the sky... that I know of.

Since I'm all for keeping it real, I can't pretend that this little project has just been wonderful.  Actually, we have discussed that in the future, we will move out completely to avoid the chaos.

Besides the fact that I'm literally covered in dust from head to toe at all times on all days, I naively thought that would be the worst problem we would have during this process. Well, actually I'm also convinced that I have contracted lung cancer from the surely cancerous 100 year old lath and plaster debris- that would clearly be the WORST problem. 

Well, don't worry, my self diagnoses had not been confirmed by any medical professionals and the house hasn't burned down or anything- so we are all good on those fronts.... but we are having some serious cabinet problems up in here.

We've been not so patiently waiting for the big moment when our new cabinets would arrive.  It feels similar to ordering an amazing pair of shoes that you are dying to wear and when they show up, they are the wrong size.

Yes, I'm likening our new cabinets to ill-fitting shoes.  Just go with it.

Backing up for a brief moment.... when we bought our house we were impressed with the beautiful custom cabinets. But now, I hate that term.  I never want to hear that term again.  Because in my world, custom cabinets loosely translates to "non-matchable, incredibly expensive and time consuming cabinets."

Our contractor had to find a custom cabinet maker who could match our existing wood and stain and build us some custom fitting cabinet pieces that would seamlessly integrate into out kitchen.  We were excited when he found someone who was great and was sure they could get it right.

We have cherry wood cabinets and they have a pretty red stain on them, so we sent a cabinet door to the cabinet maker to match.

I'm thinking that "matching" is really all relative, because I don't think they match at all.

The cabinets on the left are our existing ones, the right is the new cabinet

Actually they don't match in 2 ways. They stain is clearly the wrong color, and the wood grain is also COMPLETELY different.  

Can you see the different colors?

I was so grumpy about it, I didn't even take a photo of the mismatched grain.  I meant to, but our contractor took all the doors back to the cabinet maker after I mad some sad faces and made Chris tell him I didn't like him (that kind of talk is left up to Chris).

Well, our contractor is going to get one of the two problems fixed. Notice that I didn't say both problems fixed.  Ugh....

Apparently our specific cherry cabinets have a very faint grain, which they couldn't find- so they went ahead and used regular cherry wood- apparently that was an executive decision that we were not brought in on.

So we ended up with a whole new set of cabinets that have a very dark and visible grain to them, and our old cabinets have a very faint and light grain.  It actually looks like a completely different kind of wood.

Unfortunately, we are going to have to live with it.  That is a problem they can't fix.

What they are going to do is re-stain the cabinets, but that is kind of a shot in the dark as well, because sometimes the wood won't take more stain after it's cured- or so I'm told.

Awesome.

Oh yeah, this is also going to take "a few weeks."

Double awesome, because we are already one week 1 of project overrun, planning on plowing straight through week two and I'm crossing my fingers and toes that we don't exceed week 3 of overruns.  I will literally lose my mind.

In the long run, we probably won't notice the differing wood grain or the slightly lighter stain after we live with it for a while, and what's a few extra weeks of construction when we will have a lifetime of enjoyment from it? 

This is just a little hiccup. Its nothing like the dust-induced lung cancer I'm about to have- knock on wood that 100 year old dust does NOT give you lung cancer.