October 2, 2008

Finishing the master bath

The master bath is about finished.

We await only the shower glass, (another week, but we are using the shower) and the rads (also next week).

A series of photos starts here:
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/morebath

There were a host of minor issues as the bath moved along. Many of those issues relate to mistakes made by my vendor, Brooklyn Kitchens aka Garfield Kitchens aka Brian Ackerman. He is poorly reviewed on Brownstoner. In fact I should have known better, as I used him previously for a kitchen, and two bathrooms, and had major delivery problems. Nevertheless, I thought that maybe the devil that you know is better than the devil you don’t know. It maybe that I made a mistake on this score, as everything I’ve ordered has been a minor disaster. Still, I have to say that I have been generally happy with the items I have received, and the prices for same.

But this guy seems to thrive on drama. When you are unable to sleep at night, threaten to cancel all your orders, promise to hire three kids from East New York to wreck his showroom, and to jump across his desk and lay him out, well, then he seems happy and gets you your stuff. Sometimes.

Take the vanities, for example. We liked the Ronbow Juno he had in his showroom.
http://www.ronbow.com/product.php?s=CC1098&cid=6
He said, ‘good choice, I have fifty of these in my warehouse at all times’! A month before I estimated that I would need them, I asked for them. Actually, it took twelve weeks for them to show up. He, or his wholesaler, ordered them direct from China. No warehouse. It so happened that we failed the plumbing inspection and so lost eight weeks, so the vanities showed up almost in time.

When we opened the box, there were no tops. We had assumed that when we ordered what he had in his showroom, the same vanity tops would accompany them. Silly us! Instead of using the twelve weeks while the vanities were on the water to get the tops or ask us to pick them, we just wasted that time. But Brian would make it up to us by giving us whatever top we wanted, no extra charge. So we chose some nice Carrera marble tops, which we were assured were made on Union Street, and would be available in a matter of days.

The day after we ordered them I had a bad feeling. I remembered that we had ordered from Brian (and had in our possession) a faucet assembly that requires but a single centered hole in the vanity, but that a common layout would be a three hole setup. I wanted to remind him we needed the single hole configuration. I stopped by the store and reminded him in person the very next day.

I’ll spare you the details but it took three weeks of drama to get the marble vanities. When his associate delivered them, of course they were drilled wrong. They were drilled for three holes. Rather than refuse them, I agreed to accept a different faucet/handle configuration, which I have to say I got in a couple of days. Then he went to drop the tops into the vanities. The sink clips were on the wrong part, and the tops wouldn’t fit. They had to be returned. When I got them back in a couple of days, the old pins weren’t completely cut down, and I had to finish the job with a Dremel. And then, in contradiction of what I said earlier about how the products were OK even if delivery wasn’t, the back top side of the marble backslash was not polished. They too had to be returned. This whole fiasco set me back about two weeks.

Meanwhile, the tub. The plumber, way back, had a hard time reading the drain diagram, and asked for the actual tub to lay out the drain. More of the usual Brooklyn Kitchens drama. Eventually the tub showed up, the drain was cut, and the tub sat around until we could pass inspection. Meanwhile we ordered the faucets, which were clean modern versions that exactly matched the original sink faucets (but three holes). When the plumber opened the box he saw that the tub was drilled for the old clawfoot style (two holes) but we had a three hole setup. Back to Brian for a replacement. It’s a lot harder to get a modern style in a two hole tub. Kohler makes one but it’s $1500 discounted. Here’s what we ended up with.
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/image/103986197
We’re thinking of getting rid of that whole hose assembly and just capping it off.

Meanwhile our lovely shower plumbing didn’t seem to be working very well. Flow was low (even after removing the flow restrictor) and the HW temperature was just barely adequate. I complained to the GC, who made a whole host of suggestions. I decided to take matters into my own hands, and I opened up the shower body, as well as inspecting the shut-off valves. Turns out the HW shut-off was partially throttled. I opened the shut-offs to full capacity and re-balanced the shower body. Now, my wife, who loves it hot hot hot, is happy, and I who love it cooler but with more flow are both happy. Except we have ordered a extension for the shower head from Brian. He says it’s on order, I say we never see it.

Then there was the issue of the light over the tub. I could wire the fixtures, but it’s the electricians’s job, so we let him do it. When I went to turn the fixtures on, the one over the tub (three halogens) had problems. The bulb on the right was not working. I replaced it, still not working. We did a circuit test, no power. To my great disgust, I envisioned having to drive back to the Bowery (btw, all the light fixtures came from newgenerationlighting.com) just to swap out the defective fixture. I took it down and all that was wrong is that the electrician had forgotten to add the pair of wires from the right bulb to the other bulbs! Now it’s working fine.

But it all works now.

We’ve moved upstairs as demo starts below. Our temporary kitchen/DR is working OK. In fact with what’s going on we’re glad to have maintained the option of being able to separate the top floor out and rent it if need be.
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/image/103719485
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/image/103719486
(If things are OK this will end up as my office)

PS: The tub really looks foreshortened in these pix due to the use of a wide angle lens.

Posted by denton at 6:57 PM | Comments (8)

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