Saturday, November 23, 2019

I Didn't Fall Off The Face Of The Earth/ Stairs and Stair Nose

Hi friends. 
How are you? I didn't disappear completely. Bill had surgery on Wednesday so I've been Florence Nightingale-ing it over here. 
He said that my compassion meter did pretty well except when I fell asleep.
I was supposed to keep my phone handy but I left it upstairs. He called, he shouted, he banged on the floor. Haha. I didn't hear a thing. He had to come down to get his own ice pack. 
I may hear about this one for the rest of my days, I'll say. Well, I was exhausted. We have a two story house and I made umpteen trips up and down those stairs to bring him food, meds, ice, etc. etc. etc. 
He's fine but one of his toes his now shorter than the rest. 
He had a cyst in the joint in one of his toes. It was gross, so I won't tell you about it. 
His new nick name is Shorty, though. 
It did make completely forget about Keep In Touch.  
I'm so sorry. I'll be back on Tuesday. 


Let's talk about the stairs for a minute. 
I haven't really shown a reveal of the stairs. There was a reason. I can share now because the story has a happy ending. 
We had our tile floors cracked up on July 8th. 


See the dust on the table tops? It was horrific. I think I'm still finding dust. 
We ordered our flooring at the end of July. 



It came in and they started installing on August 19th. 
They couldn't get the stair nose. The stair nose and the flooring were two different manufacturers. The stair nose people kept saying that it was shipping the next day.
At one point they even said it was on the truck for delivery. It wasn't. 


My step mom died August 31st. Stair nose wasn't even a concern at this point. 
On the way back to her house from the memorial service, my sales rep. called to say that the stair nose was in and that they could begin work on it the next Tuesday. 
 We really couldn't get near the stairs while they were working on them. I called the store and paid the balance as soon as the workmen left the house. 
That night when I went up to bed, I just felt like the stairs didn't look great. The workmanship was superb but the color of the stair nose was off. The top stair was completely wrong. It was too red. 



The color, the sheen, the size was all off. I was just sick about it. Bill and I are fairly non-confrontational but I knew I needed to confront it. 
I emailed my rep with pictures attached. He immediately called me back and said that he'd be by to look at it the next morning. When he saw it in person, he said that they would reorder another piece to match and that if it didn't match, he'd have it custom made.
It came in. He came by to see if it matched. It coordinated. At this point, he said that the stair nose manufacturer promise coordinating stair nose not a perfect match.
 He said he would put me on the schedule for install. 
We had our trip to Italy. We had Bible study at our house at the beginning of October. My sister in law wanted to see the stair nose. She immediately noticed one that didn't look good. Unfortunately, that wasn't the stair nose in question. It was a different one. 


Through out, I wavered between feeling like I was being too picky and feeling like I didn't get quality work. 


My flooring is about 80% dark chocolate with 20% a mocha color. 
My stair nose was 80% mocha and 20% dark. I lost sleep over these stairs. It has colored the way I feel about the rest of the floors. I finally brought it up to Bill. I said I just thought it wasn't what we paid for. 


He agreed. 
I called my sister in law and brother and asked them what they would do. 
I texted pictures to and then called my designer friend. 
She told me that she would visit her flooring jobs during install. She would pick out the flooring boards and tell her crew where to put each board. My crew didn't have a selection of lighter boards to go with the lighter stair nose because they were finished flooring the rest of the house. 
I'd begun to feel like we should have never let them start flooring the house while the stair nose was on order. Of course, being newbies, we wouldn't have known to pull boards out to match the stairs. 
Everyone agreed that I should pursue resolution. 
I decided to call my sales rep. 
I told him that I hadn't heard from the guy to replace the red one but that in the mean time, I decided that about half of them weren't good. He wanted the crew chief to come look at them. I waited for his call. It took another week or so, but the foreman finally called. He wanted to come by the next day to replace the red SN. I told him not to come. I explained the issues to him. He told me he thought a rep. from the SN vendor should come with him to look at the stairs. He was going to talk to the showroom and get back to me. 
 We were now at the end of October. I sent my rep. an email this time listing my concerns. It took several weeks but I finally got a response to my email. My sales rep. had been on vacation. He would call me to set up a time to come to the house. He came on Thursday and he brought a manager. The manager had a look at the stairs and said that they could do better. 
I felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. 
I expressed to them, that I'd been in a bit of a fog after my mother died. It took a few weeks to really see that the stairs did not look good. They look okay but not good.  
To me, this was a manufacturer promising something that wasn't accurate. 
It didn't coordinate enough with the flooring. 




We chatted for few minutes. The manager told me that they are going to reorder a new box of flooring. They are taking that to a cabinet shop where my stair nose will be custom scrapped and stained to match the new stair flooring. 
I'm very pleased.  
The manager even noticed that the sheen of the stair nose doesn't match the sheen of the planks of floor. So even if the color was good, it might always look a little "off". 
We probably won't have the final stairs in until the new year but just knowing that there is an answer has set my mind at rest. 
 I was patient, through out, even though I was really upset about it. I was respectful but firm.
I'm so glad that I remained calm.
In between trips up the stairs to take care of Bill, I managed to get the remaining Christmas trees put up. The Thanksgiving ornaments still need to come off the dining room tree but that will have to wait until next Friday. 
We have Friendsgiving tonight at a friend's house.
 We're also hosting Thanksgiving dinner so the dining room is still turkeys and cornucopias but the rest of the house has Christmas started. 
How about you? Have you started decorating for Christmas? 
Katie

10 comments :

  1. Kate,
    Thanks so much for stopping by!! I giggled a bit about your hubby not being able to get a hold of you. When I had my knee surgery, I could not sleep in the bed so I slept downstairs on the sofa for 2 1/2 months. Even though I was pretty much able to do my own thing, I kept my cell phone by me so I could call Joe on the land line if I fell or something...That would have been my only way of getting in touch with him because he sleeps like a brick!!
    Happy Thanksgiving!!
    Hugs,
    Debbie

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  2. Perseverance! We get it! Love the post-op surgery care! Happy Thanksgiving Katie! laura in CO

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  3. LOL about your husband not being able to get his Florence Nightingale to wake up on duty!!! I am glad you stuck by your feelings about the stairs and got some action on it. These things are so expensive and you should get quality work and feel great about the job done. I am glad it is a good manufacturer and will make it right for you. Have a great Thanksgiving.
    Hugs,
    Kris

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  4. Skipping Thanksgiving decorations and already into Christmas. I am so proud of you for sticking it out to get what you were promised! We had a horrible delivery of a brand new refrigerator and the store said they would send someone out and no one has shown up yet...2 months later. We can't get the plug out to put the water filter in even. I wish I had not been so distracted, but hubby was ill and hospitalized and I just couldn't deal with it.

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  5. Katie, Im glad you didn't fall off and hope your hubby is feeling better. Your floors are beautiful and I'm glad they will fix them for you. Will look for you Tuesday, although will probable be late as usual..Happy Monday..Judy

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  6. Get well wishes to Bill. I never ever heard the term "stair nose" before. Good for you for being so vigilant and determined!

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  7. I hope your hubby is feeling great and his healing will be speedy.
    The stair nose is not a good match what a shame since the rest of the flooring is perfect.
    Happy Thanksgiving,
    Kippi

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  8. How funny about you falling asleep, Katie! I guess you will hear about it forever. Good for you in sticking to your guns in wanting to get your floors to what you paid for.

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  9. Katie, I am so sorry to hear about your mother's passing. It is so tough to go through that and then we often think, "Oh, I need to tell ______ this the next time I talk with her!" Tell her anyway. <3 Just talk out loud when you need to; it helps. <3 And I am glad you will get some resolution to the stair issue. No, it doesn't look right and yes, they could come and restain, but I bet it is a difference between white oak and red oak... Red oak will always stain red. We had red oak cabinets (those 1990 ones) in both of our California houses and I loved them but they would always be red so the second house, the previous owner painted the kitchen cabinets white (which I loved!).

    Hope your Thanksgiving was fun with friends and that your own Thanksgiving is good this week. <3 Thinking of you...

    Love and hugs,
    Barb :)

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  10. Glad you went ahead and asked them to redo the stairs and make it right. Sometimes we just leave as is, then be mad for eternity because it's NOT right. OK, maybe that's just me, but I've had this happen many times. Poor Bill, my hubby did that to me once on coming home from major surgery. forgot to check on me and bring a pain pill. I still haven't let him forget it, haha. hope Bill's doing better now. Have a great Thanksgiving!

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