kitchen | Hicks House

As with any home purchase there are always things that come with the house that need to be fixed. With new construction the general expectation is that since the house is brand new and no one has lived there yet, the home should be in pristine condition. That was surely our expectation – however that is not the case.

There were several issues we found when we did our final walk-through with the builder the day before we closed. Since the home came with a one year warranty we figured these issues would be addressed. It’s now been almost a year and with the warmer weather the builder and his contractors have been starting to rectify some of the problems.

One of the most annoying issues to me was caused when they replaced the laminate countertops with the granite ones. The laminate was much thicker than the granite and they had CUT the piece of cabinetry that surrounds the fridge in order to shove the counters in. Well when they put in the new slimmer counters this left the exposed divot.

See that? that is raw wood. Here is another angle.

Arggg it made me so angry! Granted it was by far not the worst thing wrong with the house or the most expensive to fix, but it was the most obvious. To add to the frustration when they cut this lovely notch they cut ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE FLOOR. So there is also raw wood showing in the toe kick area.

You’re getting angry not too aren’t you? Is there no pride in the craft anymore? Who does this?!

We were finally able to convince the builder to order a new frame piece. As luck would have it, before it came in we were notified that the cabinet company was going out of business awesome. Luckily the piece came in before they completely close up shop (along with a bathroom vanity that was also broken – although they sent the wrong one… so that’s another story) and the contractors came to put it in. They had to pull out the fridge in order to get to and remove the panel.

At this point I went to check on the plumber that was working upstairs (it was a busy day). When I came down to check on the contractors in the garage I noticed they had the panel all marked up and were about to cut.

Me: WAIT! What are you doing!

Contractor: We have to cut the panel to fit around the countertop and cabinets.

Me: Ok… but why would you be cutting it ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM AGAIN? That was one of the issues we had with the old panel and the cabinet company is going out of business so we cannot get another one. It needs to be cut to fit just around the cabinet not all the way to the floor.

Contractor: Yeah, I guess I can do that…

OMG. Kill me know.

So he re-measured to cut just a notch around the cabinets leaving the nice finished wood at the bottom. Then started cutting with a Dremmel. Oh no, that’s not a typo, a Dremmel for a cut 42 inches long that is supposed to be straight. Ken, the tool aficionado informed me this should have been done with a skilsaw.

You can slap your palm to your head now. This is how they “kept it still”. After all that skilled work I guess its no real surprise that it didn’t really fit.

It definitely looks better than before but now its a total crumb catcher.

I’m hopeful that this can be addressed with a little clear silicon so that stuff can’t get caught in there and it will blend in more. (They of course didn’t do this).

However, in the meantime at least I don’t seethe with rage whenever I go to the fridge or make coffee. Here’s a side by side.

So what do you think, have you had any warranty issues with a new build or had work done and were unhappy with the results? I’d love to hear about it.

Before we bought our house, even before we started thinking and looking for a house we would often find ourselves in the kitchen organization aisle at the home improvement stores. You know the ones, they have every gadget you could possibly imagine, that you never knew you needed until you saw it and realized how you never needed it before because its the BEST THING EVER??!!! Yeah… that aisle.

We would dream and say if we ever built our own house someday and were able to get in there from the very beginning we would have the most awesome organized kitchen we’d ever seen. Well we didn’t get in to the house before it was built, so we didn’t have any say in the layout (I think the builder is very grateful for this – we’re kind of annoying). Despite that, we still wanted to do some customization.

Enter Rev a Shelf. They make all these handy pull out organizers and things for your kitchen that you can install after the fact. Look at all the awesome things they make! (Note: This post is not sponsored or supported by Rev a Shelf) We wanted it all. Seriously, we debated in the aisle forever trying to narrow down to a reasonable number. So we started with this:

Its the basic pull out two tier shelves

They only come in set sizes, so first measure the interior of the cabinet you want to install it in and get the size closest that is not bigger than your cabinet or it will not fit.

dry test fit

screw in one side

The shelf is actually only attached on one side which is how you can get away with a size that is slightly smaller than your cabinet. Which for us turned out to be useful since the right side of our cabinet doesn’t open all the way due to it being next to the stove. We were able to combat the problem by screwing the shelf into the left side and it just clears the door.

Shelves installed

look at that slide!

pots and pans in the new shelf

The shelf is amazing!!! I seriously don’t know how we ever lived without it. We used to have to take out every pot and pan just to get the one we wanted out of the back of the cabinet. The slide mechanism of the shelves makes such perfect sense I don’t know why all cabinets aren’t built this way to begin with. Everything is so easy to find now, and when you see the one you want its easily removable without having to empty everything out.

We loved it so much we put in two more. Each of the cabinets that are in the center island also got a rev a shelf:

island cabinets

The install isn’t quite as easy as the directions suggest. They had a complete install time of 30 minutes and it took Ken closer to an hour to do the first one, and he’s an above average to expert assembler. Despite that, even he says its worth it, and was willing to tackle the project two more times.

So what do you think? Do you want to install your own?