is this a lousy granite installation?

As of last weekend we had the granite installed in our new kitchen, and a number of issues have come up. I know about cabinets, but as this is the first time I’ve had granite installed I don’t know if I’m making too much of a fuss, or whether I have reason to feel aggrieved at the results.

To begin with, I went out of my way to tell the guy who came to do the measuring two specific points –

1) that the edge of granite lining up against the wall oven cabinet had to be perfectly in line with it as we didn’t want to have any kind of facing on the woodwork (granite backsplash, tile, etc)

2) To be careful with his measurements because both walls that made up the L of the kitchen were not straight.

In short, I couldn’t have gone more out of my way to highlight the fact that there were issues that could throw off the installation, and mess up our desire for a clean line along the oven cabinet. We even called the owner of the business to reinforce our point, and also asked him to try and make sure that the separate pieces matched up as closely as possible at the joins, because we were well aware that the granite we chose had some strong patterning that could pose problems lined up together. The guy admonished me over my concerns with ‘Sir, we are professionals and do our job properly!’

Well, the measurer came back a second day, and to ensure he got the measurements rights used some cardboard strips, which he glued together to create a template. Suitable impressed, I thought that everything was going to be okay. Then Saturday arrived and I sat there thinking ‘What the hell are they doing’ as I watched the company’s installers do their work.

Firstly, I’d always been led to believe that a bead of silicone or some sort of adhesive was put along the top of the cabinets prior to installing the granite. These guys just sat the granite straight on top. (They also came close to causing some severe damage by trying to stand the edge of the heaviest piece, the corner, on the weakest points of both the sink cabinet and the cooktop cabinet – I had to hurriedly tell them not to do so in order to prevent them cracking the cabinets and possibly dropping the slab as well.)

When they’d finished installing the four pieces I couldn’t believe it – after everything I had said, and after being told how professional they are, they’d still contrived to screw up one of the things I had asked – to make sure they measured the cut along the wall oven cabinet correctly so that there wouldn’t be a gap. The granite touched the cabinet at the front, then gradually receded away towards the back, leaving an unsightly gap of about 3/16ths. The installers just looked at me like I was being an SOB when I asked why it was there after I’d been assured it would be taken care of. They then filled it with tinted epoxy resin, and followed up by sticking a thick bead of silicone, half an inch wide, along the granite and cabinet edge. I hurriedly wiped the latter off before it had a chance to set, because I sure as hell didn’t want the whole thing made to look even worse by an unsightly gob of silicone permanently on show. I’ve also been told that silicone can stain granite?

After they left I took a close look at the job and just found their work to seemingly be a testament to sheer sloppiness and lack of professionalism. They’d left so much silicone sticking out from the under mount sink that I’d have had a half inch bead left showing permanently had I not gone around and tidied it up. The end piece at one end of the kitchen was so mismatched color-wise that it looked almost like it came from a different type of slab altogether – yet had they simply turned it around before making the cutout for the sink the all-important front edge would have made a slightly better match to the neighboring piece. Worse, there was a noticeable unevenness, a ‘bump’ of sorts, where the two pieces met, and it was quite noticeable from even across the kitchen. When I looked more closely I figured out the reason – the smaller slab to the left was about an 1/8th of an inch thinner than the other piece, so that while they’d been able to shim it level on top, they couldn’t do anything about the bottom edge and had tried doctoring it up so as not to show. The back corner of the same piece, on the very end of the cabinets, was sticking out from the wall by ¼” and they had tried masking it yet again with another big gob of silicone following right round the contoured edge.

I also found out, with the use of a ruler, that they’d mislaid the whole thing and had obviously not heeded my warnings about the walls. Towards the corner of the L on one side the granite edge was sticking out from the base cabinet underneath by nearly two inches, yet 6 feet away the depth was the more standard 1 ½ inches. The mismatch in measurements on the other part of the L were almost the same, telling me that the whole thing should have been lined up slightly differently. Had they done so the gap along the oven cabinet would probably not have been an issue. I just sat there asking myself what the heck the templates had been for if they’d messed the situation up so much and ignored all my warnings?

The owner of the business came out and basically, in his glib, fast-talking fashion, tried claiming that there were no issues and tried throwing it back at us by claiming everything and anything he could think up that made it our fault. The mismatched piece was fine, my gripe about the gap along the cabinet was me splitting hairs (despite their assurances that they could do it), the bulge and difference in thickness at the join was also something he just laughed off, while the gap at the back corner was blamed on the very same walls I had instructed them to take heed of. The whole process got reduced to a joke when I pointed out a spot where his installers hadn’t been bothered to clean up some of the epoxy on the oven cabinet, and he repeatedly kept claiming he couldn’t see what I was talking about – I finally had to put a pencil up to it to point out what anyone could have seen from yards away.

So I leave it to you guys, as I’m no expert on the matter. Do we have reason to feel aggrieved, or not? It’s not like we expect perfection, but if I ask for something, receive repeated assurances that all will be well, only to see exactly what I had worried about come to fruition, I feel like I have reason to be pissed. Same with the color match. I didn’t expect them to go cherry picking through slab after slab just to give me a perfect color match, but within the two slabs we set aside I would have expected someone to map and plan the cuts that would have given us the best match – as I said, all they had to do was turn that one end piece around and at least one side of the sink would have looked okay.

Also look at the cutout for the sink – are there limits to what kind of radius cuts can be made to follow the contours of a sink, or could we have expected better with regard to what we got with ours?

Pictures can be found at Photobucket here – http://s1007.photobucket.com/albums/af194/timbo59/granite%20counter%20top/?albumview=slideshow

PS – One solution proposed for the gap we’re not happy with along the oven cabinet is to sit a single piece of granite, 3” high, on the counter top against the cabinet, like a backsplash. I just thought it would look weird having a single piece there without a matching backsplash going right round the rest of the counter. We didn’t want a granite edge along the back, which is why we were so specific about wanting a clean edge along the oven cabinet. Any thoughts on the point?