Thanks to my beloved wife for letting me handle this one.
I took off three weeks from work from mid-September until early October. We had arranged for the kitchen cabinets to be delivered the last Friday in September; installation was scheduled for the Monday. My wife and I couldn’t help but dream that the end of our renovation work was near, at least as far as the kitchen was concerned. Once the cabinets were installed, getting the countertop and flooring would be a snap. We were so cute in our naivete, weren’t we?
Even after the debacle with the walls (see If These Walls Could Talk—and likely future blogs), I had few fears. Our dealings with Park Slope Kitchen Gallery had been great. The saleswoman was topnotch and gave both of us great confidence that this job would go smoothly. The only potential pitfall was that this was supposed to be a curbside delivery, meaning the delivery people wouldn’t carry the cabinets up to the apartment. But I knew the $20 bills in my wallet would solve that issue. Besides, if they didn’t, I figured that with enough time I could carry the cabinets myself.
The delivery guys arrived about 20 minutes late, and when I went to greet them—an older guy and young guy—at their truck, the older man looked at me and said ‘It’s just you?’ I nodded, and he said, ‘This is supposed to be curbside.’ I told him about my twenties, and he and his younger partner agreed to help. Thank goodness they did. I thought the dozens of boxes in the truck were for multiple deliveries. Nope. They were just for us.
The first box was huge. 37 inches by 37 inches by 37 inches. I don’t know what it weighed, but even though the young guy and I each grabbed an end, we struggled carrying it upstairs. The front door to our apartment is only 28 inches wide, but I wasn’t too worried. After all, the saleswoman from the cabinet place had been to our home and took extensive and meticulous measurements, so she wouldn’t have ordered something that wouldn’t fit inside, right? I left it, knowing I’d be able to take it out of the box and get it in that way.
Unloading everything took about a half hour. A second box also wouldn’t fit, but I made the same assumption about it as the other box, so again I wasn’t too concerned. I offered a $20 bill to both delivery guys, but the older guy (who had stayed with the truck) told me to just give it to the young guy. They left, I unwrapped the second large box, and successfully maneuvered the contents through the doorway.
Then I went for the first box, the 37-inch one. Unwrapped it. “Oh no,’ I said. (Those aren’t the actual words, but this is a family blog.) Inside was a solid piece that was nearly as big as the box it came in. I didn’t even try to get it through the doorway. I could feel my blood pressure rising.
I called the saleswoman and she eventually determined that the company had delivered the wrong piece. We were supposed to have received only the front piece and bottom of this corner piece, but they had delivered the entire corner cabinet. She told me they’d be able to pick it up the next day, but getting the correct piece would take two weeks.
I had really liked this saleswoman, a very together young woman. Though her news was extremely aggravating, there was nothing to do except say OK. But I couldn’t leave this huge cabinet in the hallway. My wife and I had just had a run-in with one of our new neighbors over another construction issue (see future blogs, certainly), and I was really trying to upset her even more. So I had to move the box, somehow.
There was no way I could pick it up—I couldn’t even get my arms around it. But I could slide it. Down the flight of stairs, through the landing, down the next flight, and then push it under the stairs where our fellow tenants keep their baby strollers. I measured the first flight of stairs. It was 37-1/4 inches wide, same as the second set of stairs. Like Theo Huxtable might say, ‘No problem.’
With some effort I slid the box to the stairs then guided it to the bottom of the first flight. Once on the landing, I pulled it to the other set of stairs. That’s when I hit a roadblock. This stairwell was 37-1/4 inches wide, but an overhang that I hadn’t previously noticed jutted out 3 inches. I struggled with the box for about 30 minutes—hopping over it several times to alternately push and pull it—and was really frustrated and exhausted. But I realized that unless I could lift it over my shoulders, moving the box past the overhang was impossible. And that was out of the question.
It was about 5 p.m., and someone was coming home from work. But the box was on the landing, and since I couldn’t pull it down or carry it back up, there was no way around it. I could hear the footsteps coming closer. I absolutely panicked. For any of you familiar with the Incredible Hulk, you know what happened to me. I had an adrenaline surge that made me stronger than I’ve ever been.
I pushed the giant box to the edge of the stairs leading back up to our apartment. I then reached over the box, grabbed the far end, shifted my weight and voila, the box was in the air—by just a few inches, but that was enough. I carried it up the stairs, not believing what I was doing. When I reached the top, the surge fled and my arms almost literally crumbled. They were shaking and my biceps and triceps felt like they had been blown up for three or four days afterward. I pushed the box to our door, and since it wasn’t blocking anything, I left a note on it explaining what happened.
The next day, luckily, a friend of one of the other tenants helped me carry the box to the first floor where it sat underneath the stairs, beside the strollers. I left another note, and no one ever said a word about it. But the same day, the saleswoman called to let me know they wouldn’t be able to pick up the box until Monday. I guess I was still channeling the Hulk and became enraged. I told her I would take the box outside and leave it on the street. She seemed a little caught off guard and told me to go ahead if that’s what I had to do. (We later learned from the cabinet store manager that she had originally ordered the wrong piece, and some of the other deals she made with us came off a little shady. Renovation Rule #1: Contractors and salespeople may be friendly, but they are not your friends!)
Since the box would be there until Monday, we decided to keep our cabinet installation appointment for that day and the following in hopes that the workers would be able to take the cabinet apart and bring it into the apartment.
That didn’t work and since this was the corner piece of all the base cabinets, they couldn’t install any of the cabinets. The installers charged us a fee for not being able to work that day and we had to reschedule the installation. We discovered that because of shipment schedules, we actually wouldn’t get our new sink base for three weeks and the lead cabinet installer, whom we had done so much research on, would not be available then. Eager to move the process along, we agreed to have the installation handled by the guy’s right-hand man. Meanwhile, we would have to live in our apartment with 25 boxes of cabinets until the new installation date arrived nearly a month later.
The cabinet company didn’t actually take the giant box away until Tuesday, but by then I had calmed down. Three weeks later, the correct piece was delivered, also to curbside. It was a little thing. I carried it inside, proudly, with one hand.
