Bad Weekend

So the weekend was supposed to be great, you know? Marc and I decided to redo our kitchen, and so we got new appliances, and were getting granite countertops installed.

The appliances arrived on Friday, and that all went smoothly. The granite guys showed up on Saturday. Marc was told that they were going to be arriving between 10 am and noon, but they ended up showing up at 8 am! We were still sleeping, so Marc had to hurry up and get cleaned up.

I got up and took Bandit herding. When I got back, the granite guys had already torn out all the old countertops and were working on getting the new ones set up. One of the guys asked us if we had a plumber coming. We didn't, of course, because why would we need a plumber for countertops?

Well, it turned out that because we were putting in a new sink as well, some of the plumbing would need to be rejiggered to work. Marc called some plumbing people to have them come out to give us an estimate. In the meantime, I went down to Home Depot to pick up the parts we needed. After getting all the parts, it really didn't look like that difficult a job.

The plumbing guy showed up, and quoted us $650! His "suggestion" was to move the garbage disposal to the other side of the sink, which required completely redoing the plumbing configuration (our old sink was a double bowl, with equal sized bowls, whereas the new one had two different sized bowls, and I guess typically the disposal goes in the smaller bowl, which of course was on the other side).

Anyways, $650 was just ridiculous, especially when it really didn't seem all that difficult a job. When the plumbing guy left, the granite guys were telling us that the plumber was crazy. One of the granite guys apparently knew some plumbing, and offered to do it for us for $150. I was still hesitant to pay anyone anything, because I really thought this was a job we could do ourselves, but we also had people coming over to watch the game, and we just weren't going to have much time.

On the bright side, the countertops looked great! The granite guys left, and the one guy was going to come back later to finish our plumbing. In the meantime, Marc and I started to install our new dishwasher. It turns out that dishwashers come with none of the parts you need to install them. No water hoses, not even a power cord! So back to Home Depot I went to pick up the needed parts.

At first we thought we could just use the existing water line from the old dishwasher. Unfortunately, the old one hooked up in the back, while our new one hooked up in the front, which meant that the existing line was way too short. This time, Marc went to Home Depot to pick up new copper tubing. I'm not joking, we went to Home Depot at least 5 or 6 times that day.

Copper tubing is a bitch to work with. It's not all that easy to bend it a little, but it's easy to bend it too much, to the point where it kinks. We had to try a couple times to get it right. Of course, by this time, some of our friends were over at the house, and the game was about to start, and our whole kitchen was in disarray.

Even better, the granite guy was back, and he was working on our plumbing, which meant that we had to turn off all the water to the house. Which meant that no one could use the bathroom.

We finally got the dishwasher hooked up, turned back on the water, and it leaked everywhere. The worst part? Even though the sink plumbing was done to the point where we could've turned the water back on, the valve for the dishwasher supply was broken, so it spewed water everywhere even when it was supposedly closed. So until we got the dishwasher up and going, the water was going to have to stay off.

We watched the game and worked on the dishwasher during commercials. Everyone had brought over some snacks, and I went to get a bowl for some dip. When I opened the cupboard, one of our coffee cups (a nice one too) fell onto the counter. It broke, and when it bounced up I stupidly tried to stop it to keep it from falling to the floor. Well, I must have come down on it too hard, because one of the jagged corners went right into my palm. This of course, started bleeding profusely, and even better, we had no water!

So I've now got a napkin in my hand to try to stop the bleeding, and I'm running around the house frantically trying to locate our broom. Elaine and Deepali were nice enough to help me clean up. Marc was out yet again, to go pick up some part we needed.

The granite guy then ran into some problems. He was basically done, except that there seemed to be some part missing on our garbage disposal, and he couldn't install it. The guy didn't really speak English, so we had no idea what part he was talking about. He finally had to leave because it got so late, and was going to come back the next morning.

After the game, people hung out for a bit, but then they started to have to leave, mostly because they had to pee. We did finally just turn on the water for a bit, so that everyone could at least use the bathroom.

When everyone was gone, Marc and I continued to try to fix the dishwasher. I managed to find a better wrench, and we discovered that we had simply not tightened down the connections enough. When we got them good and tight, we turned the water back on. No leaks! By this time though, it was already like 2 am. But at least we had running water.

I also finally figured out what part we were missing from our disposal. So Marc and I got up at 6:30 am on Sunday and went to Home Depot (again!) and picked up the part we needed. We got home, popped the part on, and got the disposal installed. The plumbing was done at last! And the poor granite guy didn't have to come back out again.

Bandit and I were supposed to have a trial on Sunday, but it was all the way up in Santa Rosa, and Marc and I were just exhausted. I decided not to go, because we were just too tired, and we still had lots to do in the kitchen. And anyways, with the way our weekend was going, most likely we'd drive two hours there, and Bandit wouldn't qualify on anything.

So on Sunday, after a long nap, we went to install our new gas range. This also required yet another trip to Home Depot to pick up a gas hose, which we had unwittingly sold with our old one. We got everything set up, went to slide the range in, and it stopped about an inch short of the back.

It turned out that the gas valve that came out from the back of the wall was hitting a part on the back of the stove. Normally, I guess, the valve isn't right there behind the appliance. I called both Sears and Kenmore, and no one was able to help us troubleshoot this. I finally got one lady on the phone who said she had the exact same problem, and that pretty much the only solution was to redo the gas piping and relocate the valve.

Sucks.

So now we still have no stove (which is really not a big deal, since we don't really cook anyways, heh). Our options now are to either pay someone to come out and relocate the valve (probably about $300 worth of work), or exchange this range for one that doesn't have anything that'll hit the valve. I think we're going to try the latter first, and see if we can find anything at Sears.

Oh, and we also tried to get a PS3 and a Wii this weekend, and had no luck with either. I didn't figure on being able to get the PS3 (since I had class, I couldn't go wait in a line), and that was mostly just to resell it anyways. I really wanted the Wii though, and that one I would've kept for myself. Crazy how it sold out too.

So that was our weekend. Congrats if you read this whole thing!