It's Been an Exasperating Day

Let me preface this entry by saying that I realize, in the grand scheme of things, the problems, frustrations and disappointments I've encountered with this kitchen remodel are nothing compared to what's going on in Iraq, Darfur, the National Democratic Party headquarters and any number of other places in the world.

With that said, please allow me to dump the details of this day from hell. It started in much the same way as many other days associated with this project have: filled with anticipation and guarded hope – in many ways, it seemed entirely possible that we would pick up our backsplash tile, start laying it and be done by early afternoon.

Unfortunately, nothing even remotely close to this scenario was in the cards. After a delicious, relaxing breakfast at Pleasant Ridge Chili, one of our regular haunts since this journey began 7 weeks ago, (Yes, folks, it has been that long, God help us.) we headed over to The Tile Shop to pick up our backsplash tile. On the drive over, I said (and perhaps I jinxed us here): Dare a girl dream? The resounding answer: Hells no.

We've been to this little warehouse/showroom several times and every time we've been there, I've asked and confirmed and triple-checked that they did, indeed, have our backsplash tile in stock, ready to be picked up whenever we were. (Ironically, this tile was one of the first things we settled on way back in the day.)

So there was no doubt in my mind that we'd walk in, tell them what we needed (50 square feet, by Jim's estimation), drop several benjamins and be on our merry way. As luck would have it, they had just sold the crux of their stash but would happily order it for us – it would be here by Thursday. That's when the shine first started to come off the penny.

You see, the plan was to get the backsplash tiled today in time for our appliances to be delivered tomorrow (that's another story in and of itself), grout tomorrow, have the electricians come back on Tuesday, and wrap this bitch up by the end of the week. Thursday would not do at all, especially since I unplugged our upstairs refrigerator this past Thursday night (part of the aforeto mentioned other story).

I said as much to Steve, our helpful salesman. He asked us to give him a minute as he figured out who bought the tile and when they needed it; maybe he could perform the old switcheroo and give us theirs and have theirs come in on Thursday. After several minutes, he came back to say it had worked. I was not convinced. Even though Jim was sporting a positive outlook, I said I wouldn't believe it until we were driving off with it. Maybe that's when I jinxed us because upon further calculations, Steve figured out that even if we bought every last one of the tiles they had on hand, presold or otherwise, we'd be short about 100 tiles.

Slit my wrists now. And the sad part is, that wasn't the worst of it. In an effort not to drag this story out too much further, we went to Home Depot and found a tile we liked, until we put it up against our granite. Yuck. So then we went to Lowe's where we picked up at least 10 different options so we could go back home and see what we liked best, if anything (we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we may have to wait 'til Thursday after all).

Surprisingly, we liked two options. So after we ate lunch, we hopped in the car and headed for the Lowe's near my house. They didn't have it, but called around to find out where we could get it. They put 40 square feet on hold for us 25 minutes east of my house and the remaining 10 square feet back up north at the Fields Ertel location, where we started.

After much searching around, the western location finally located the boxes of tile, but couldn't find more than just 5 pieces of the pencil edge we needed. We said no problem, we were going to another store and could just pick up the rest there. Not so much, as it turned out. But the guy there looked it up for us and found some out at a store about 30 miles west.

Since we hadn't had much luck thus far, I decided to give that store a call from the gas station before we took that drive just to be on the safe side, and sure enough, they didn't have them. But the nice girl there called around and called me back to say they were at the Highland Heights, Kentucky store (about 30 minutes from where we were and in another state) and that someone there would have them on hold for us.

We drove all the way out there and of course they weren't on hold, but they were at least on the shelf. By the time I walked out with them in hand, it was about 7:30 p.m. By the time we got home after grabbing a bite to eat, it was almost 9 p.m. We started out around 9:30 in the morning and 2 Home Depots, 4 Lowe's (including the same once twice) and almost 12 hours later, we still didn't have the first tile laid. De-pressing. But as Scarlett once said, tomorrow is another day. I just hope it doesn't suck as bad as today did.