No Store Credit for Emotional Square Footage

Never start a custom ensuite demolition without a signed contract. I learned that the hard way with Joanne down on Arthur Street.

She wanted a luxury walk-in shower with oil-rubbed bronze fixtures. Said it made her feel like she was living in a Tuscan villa instead of a bungalow next to a frozen drainage ditch. Four weeks later, we have a minor disagreement about whether it's appropriate to sing George Jones while removing baseboards, and she axes the whole project.

So there I am at 6:15 AM, standing at the Wiegand's contractor counter. I slapped five heavy cartons of bronze and an uncut roll of Schluter waterproofing membrane onto the laminate.

The girl at the returns desk just stared at me. She looked me dead in the eye and said custom orders aren't refundable after thirty days. I told her I hadn't even swung the hammer yet. I asked if there was a SKU for measuring a room's square footage twice and still coming up emotionally empty.

She picked up the phone and called the shift manager.

I hauled the boxes back out to my F-150. The exhaust was hanging thick and white in the pitch-black February air. Now that fancy oil-rubbed bronze is sitting in my garage right next to the Toro snowblower that seized up on me back in 2008.

Massimo told me to just put it all on Facebook Marketplace and recoup the financial loss. I told him absolutely not. The minute you toss out the raw materials, you admit the job is completely dead. And "The Slab" doesn't abandon a load-bearing dream just because of a thirty-day policy.