Granite Debacle

Happy Monday morning, folks!

Many of you may have read through Friday's post about the drama surrounding our granite countertops. It's seriously a total nightmare and I am so confused, it's not even funny. Here's the gist:

• We made our initial granite selection of Santa Cecilia when putting our "dream house" on paper with our Ryan rep.
• We went to the flooring company to make additional selections, and OMWord! The sample of Santa Cecilia they had made me want to puke! They had another sample -- Giallo Napoleano -- that I loved waaaaay more than the ugly Santa Cecilia one. Honestly, their Giallo Napoleano sample truly reminded me of what I thought the Santa Cecilia we originally chose with our Ryan rep looked like. So we switched our granite selection based on this.
• I stopped by to see our Ryan rep and asked to borrow their sample of Giallo Napoleano to try to match backsplash samples to it. I was beside myself when I saw their sample. It was hideous! Very peachy/orangey/UGLY. I said a little prayer that maybe it was just cut from an ugly slab and tried to move on.
• So the way Ryan works, once you sign on the dotted line and they begin building your house, you don't have a say in anything. You can't make any changes, you can't truly know what's going on unless you drive by (three times per day, like some of us) and you have to rely on ONE weekly 5-minute call from your PM for your "update." It sucks. We don't really work that way so, not surprisingly, we've forced ourselves into the process and have become more involved. Case in point: I asked our PM for the name of the company that would be installing our granite. I just wasn't comfortable that it was going to be what I wanted it to be, and I wanted to talk to The Source to be sure I'd be happy. I asked the guy questions and essentially told him I would be willing to drive to their Georgia fabrication plant (over 2 1/2 hours each way) so I could hand select OUR ACTUAL SLAB myself. He instead offered to send me a pic of the actual slab our granite would be cut from. I waited. And called again. Then waited more.
• Two weeks later (this past Friday), I finally got a picture of the slab. Upon my first sight of it, I literally curled up into the fetal position, threw up in my mouth and began crying an "ugly cry." Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad but seriously folks, I had a knot in my stomach you wouldn't believe! It looked NOTHING like the one I imagined! WTHeck??
• I immediately got in touch with our Ryan rep and explained the situation. I put together a graphic using the pics I've taken over the past 3 months to better explain the mess I was seeing. Take a look at it and see if you can understand the madness of the situation (I think you can click it to make it bigger):

• Seriously! I know, right? Please tell me you can see all the differences and discrepancies between samples of the SAME COLOR. I get that there will be variances, but GEEZ! This is impossible!
• Long story short (or quite long, actually), our Ryan rep told us our granite vendor and PM will be at our new house tomorrow morning, and that the granite vendor will bring an actual piece of the actual slab of Giallo Napoleano that our counters will be cut from (the hideous mess from the pic above). I asked that they have the vendor also bring a sample of the actual slab of Santa Cecilia that our counters would be cut from if we decide to change our decision (which I'm 99.9% sure we will) so I can have the actual slab in my hands to make this decision. No more worrying about variations, differing slabs, etc. We would see THE only two options we would be choosing between, so we can figure things out and move on.

For the record, I honestly can't imagine how much time, money and effort I saved Ryan by maneuvering my way into the granite game plan. Had I not, that ugly slab of Giallo Napoleano would've been fabricated and installed in our house, only to have me see it, throw up, and get it the crap out of there. Then there's the delay they'd have with ordering a new slab, having it fabricated and delivered, installed, etc. I just did them (and me) a HUGE favor. Honestly, I think it all comes down to those samples at the flooring store potentially being mislabeled. I think my Santa Cecilia that I loved was incorrectly labeled Giallo Napoleano, and vice versa. Who knows if we'll ever know.

On a happier note, the drywall is complete and they have painted the first coat of paint throughout the entire house! Yay!