Finished

After the whole drama with the tub refinishing was over (the first guy had apparently done the entire job wrong, so the second guy had to pour acid on the tub to remove the glaze and start from scratch – he was here for an entire day working on it. But it looks really nice now.), the bathroom remodel was almost done. We just needed a medicine cabinet. So I went to Home Depot and didn’t find anything that went with our bathroom fixtures that I liked even a little bit. So I went to Lowes and I found a really pretty medicine cabinet with an oval mirror that had a pretty brushed metal frame with a dark finish that matched our bathroom well. I brought it home and was disappointed to find that it was too big – it didn’t fit between the light and the faucet (and we weren’t going to move the light).

So I returned that and got the only other mirror that I liked that matched our bathroom. It was also pretty – a rectangular medicine cabinet with mirrors on the inside and outside of the cabinet. And it came in either a silver or a dark finish, so the dark one worked perfectly with our bathroom. I brought it home, took it out of the box, and the mirror on the inside of the cabinet was shattered. I went back and exchanged it, and when we opened up the second one the little box mounting hardware was missing. So I called back and they said they didn’t have anymore. They did have some of the same ones with the silver frames, though, so they said I could come and just take the little box of hardware from the silver frame. So I went back and did that. They told me that they had to do a special exchange so that their computer system showed that the parts were missing from the silver mirror, and they did that and gave me the parts and a new receipt. So, when we went to hang up the mirror that evening, we opened up the box of parts only to find that we were missing lots of the parts that were listed on the list of parts in the owner’s manual. I was surprised that the same mirror with different colored frames would have different parts. So I called Lowes and of course they didn’t have anymore of that medicine cabinet. They did say that their stores in Henrietta and Greece each had 3 of those mirrors.

So, on Tuesday after the long weekend I made a trip out to the Henrietta Lowes with the four younger boys after Kolby left for kindergarten. We hit a couple of garage sales on our way to Lowes, and I had plans to stop and let Eli pick up a birthday gift for a friends’ birthday party after we exchanged the mirror at Lowes and then maybe hit a few more garage sales on our way home before Kolby’s school bus returned. We got into Lowes and made a stop at the bathroom (although I’ve made bathroom stops mandatory for all potty-trained children at home before every car trip, we still find ourselves stopping at least once or twice every time we go to a store). Then we went to find the mirror, and there wasn’t one on the shelf. I asked someone if they had any, and they said the computer showed they had sold at least one that morning and they were out. I was seriously tired of this, so I just went up to the returns desk and told them I wanted my money back and I’d go find a mirror at some other store. The lady took my receipt and then handed me a gift card. I told her that I had paid with a credit card, and she told me that my receipt said I had paid with a gift card. At this point I was already a little annoyed at the fact that I’d made 4 trips to 2 different stores just to find this mirror with the correct parts and no broken pieces, and my kids were definitely tired of being there, so I told her to just get her manager because I had never had a gift card. So, come to find out, that “special” exchange that the other store did when I got the parts from the silver mirror involved putting the purchase on a gift card and then “selling” it back to me. And the manager went on to explain that getting cash back for any purchase that involved a gift card was very difficult, if not impossible, and would involve contacting someone in some corporate office and might not even work after taking a lot of time to try to do it. She asked if I still wanted the mirror, if it came with the parts, and I told her I did like the mirror. So after calling their store in Greece, NY to find out if they had the mirror and having them open the box to confirm that it had the hardware box inside, and trying to print directions to the other store but finally having to write them all out because their computer wouldn’t print, and giving me the gift card, I headed off to the other store. The other store was a lot further away than I had thought. I called someone from church to ask her if she would mind coming to wait with Kolby until I got home so someone would be there when his bus got there. (She is an older lady with one grown daughter, and was one of the only people I could think of who’s phone number I had in the car, and who didn’t have a kindergarten bus of their own to be home for). She sounded a little hesitant because he husband needed the car to get to work later on, but said that it would be fine. So I rushed into the third store with 4 cranky kids in tow (we had just spent at least an hour in one Lowes, and were now heading into another Lowes). I went in and they did have the mirror waiting up front for me.

Although I was trying to get out of there quickly to get home for Kolby, I wanted them to open the box and make sure everything was there, because this store was way out of the way and I wasn’t going back. The girl opened it, and we compared the parts with the list of parts, and about 1/3 of the parts were missing. And this wasn’t some cheep-o thing, either, it was Kohler brand, which I think it supposed to be a pretty decent brand. So they told me not to worry because they had a second mirror, and after someone went back to get that and we pulled all the packaging out, we found that the same 1/3 of the listed parts were missing. So I explained the entire situation to the girl, who then got on and off the phone with different people in the store. One kid came and tried to look through the owner’s manual to see what sizes of parts were missing and find them in their hardware section. Another girl went somewhere else to ask someone about another little part that no one could really tell what it was from the picture in the owner’s manual. The kids were crying, trying to run away, getting into things, and I was checking the clock about every 20 seconds – I get really stressed out when I’m late for anything. Finally I told the girl I had to go get my son and I couldn’t do this any longer.

Suddenly a manager appeared and after the entire thing was explained to her, she asked me if I still wanted the mirror. I told her I liked it, if it came with all the parts it needed. She gave me the parts the kid had found in the store, the mirror, and instructions to call Kohler if we were missing anything else (or call her back if they didn’t send me what I needed), and sold me the mirror for $99 instead of the $160 I had originally paid. She even helped to walk me and the kids and the big mirror box out the door. (And I hope she didn’t notice when Camden said he had to go potty and couldn’t hold it any longer and started to wet his pants as we were walking out while I was hurrying him out the door and telling him to stop). I got out to the car and called a friend and asked her to go relieve the other lady who was with Kolby. So my nice friend hauled all 4 of her little kids over to my place. I called and left a message for the other lady that she would be relieved soon, and I headed home as quickly as I could. When I got close to home, I got a call from the lady saying she had to leave and a neighbor was staying with Kolby – I told her I had called someone else to relieve her and she probably just missed her. When I got home, Kolby was having fun in the back yard with my friend, her 4 kids, the neighbor who the other lady asked to stay with him, and a neighborhood kid who had come to play. I felt bad that a neighbor I didn’t know well had to come watch Kolby when there was someone else there to watch him, and that my friend had to take time out of her busy day and bring all her kids over to watch him when there was a neighbor there who could have done it. They were both very nice about it. I got home about an hour after Kolby’s bus had dropped him off – and I had planned plenty of time – I should have been back with an hour or more to spare before his bus returned. Yuck, I hate being late!

Anyways, that was last week and we finally found time to put the mirror up last night. The owner’s manual was not very clear on exactly how to do every step, and we didn’t even use all the parts because some of them were for recess mounting the medicine cabinet (although all that trouble wasn’t for nothing, because we did need some of the parts that were missing and that they got us from the hardware section of the store). But we got it up, and I think it looks really, really nice. I don’t know if it was worth all that trouble, but it does look nice. And it’s nice to finish another big job. So now we’re finally totally done with the bathroom remodel (ok, well we still have to install the GFI outlet, but that shouldn’t take long at all).