Thursday, February 24, 2005

You can't get there from here

Somehow I thought buying tile would be like buying anything else...you give the people your money and they give you your tile. Maybe they even deliver your tile if you give them enough money. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

After looking at scores of tile merchants (who knew there were so MANY?), I finally find the perfect tile -- they keep it in stock (because I have to have a lot of it eventually, and can't afford it all at once)...it's sufficiently hard to withstand dogs and teenagers (did you know there are grades of hardness?)...it goes with the existing natural rock that's already part of my house which would be just awful to try to pull up...it's spotty so you won't notice the dog hair and dirt (much)...and it's just beige yet natural-looking enough that I can still paint my walls blue or green or yellow or even pink.

Turns out the Perfect Tile is located in a showroom which is wholesale only. As a noncontractor type person (although I DID argue for self-contractor status since I'm doing the work), they wouldn't sell it to me.

Instead, I had to drive across town to one of their outlets to pay for it. They had NO tile samples or grout color samples (don't you love the word "grout"? It sounds like some kind of Italian food, like gnocchi), so I had to drive back across town to get the color codes for the tile and grout I wanted -- of course, I could not simply call from the showroom...no, I had to drive back across town so I could pay the exact same wholesale price that the showroom charges.

So, I give them my money...and they tell me that I can pick up my tile FROM THE SHOWROOM...

I suppose it's a good thing I don't have anger issues. :D

3 comments:

Wyrfu said...

Nothing is ever easy, is it? Thanks for the warning - I'll avoid tiling from now on. ;)

Harry said...

Oh, but you are not even close to being done yet! *grins*

There's the hiring of Bubba and his brother-in-law, the explaining exactaly how you want everything six times, the days-off they will certainly take, the dust they will more-certainly make and the total disruption and chaos that comes with any project that requires furniture to be moved around twice.

That is, unless you do it yourself and eliminate Bubba and his helper. Then there's just the dust and furniture to deal with.

Or you could just move. :D

Jodie said...

Oh, this is DIY project...no Bubba, but a 15-year-old who will do anything to avoid work, two dogs who think they want to help, a cat who teases the dogs...and me, who has done this only on a very, very small scale...