The Great Flood

Mother Nature has nothing on a plumber that does not know how to install a Dornbracht faucet.

As we were about halfway through the kitchen project, Alan took me to lunch one day. When he arrived home, he found the house flooded. The hot water connection on the kitchen sink faucet, the Dornbracht Tara Classic that we loved, had blown off and hot water was spraying the inside of the under sink cabinet for a few hours. Well, it was hot until the water in the basement got high enough to shut off the water heater.

I'll never forget when he called me to tell me. I never heard such terror in his voice before. I instantly thought that he had come home to find all of our cats dead or that one of our grandchildren was critically injured or killed. Once I realized we were talking material damage, it wasn't so bad.

But, it was a mess. Alan acted quickly and got the water shut off and called the plumber to cap the line so we could have water to the rest of the house. Then, moved everything out of the flooded areas into other rooms to save what wasn't already ruined. Sometimes it is a benefit to not have completely level floors. The water moved into the family room, avoiding the rooms we had already completely renovated and decorated. Then, with hardwood floors, the water seeps in between the planks and then it flooded the basement--another area we had not yet begun to renovate.

Most of the damage was to the building materials. Drywall in the stairwell going into the basement, all the insulation in the ceiling of the basement, and several cabinet doors and all the kick trim under the cabinets.

Our insurance company called ServiceMaster to do the water damage control and clean up. The did a great job and saved our floors. I was just sure the hardwood would buckle and we've have to replace it, but we didn't. The downside to the water damage control is the noise. We had 5-6 industrial blowers and suction units in the kitchen and family room for five days. Imagine you are in the back of a jet for 5 days straight. We had to just use the downstairs to get in and out of the house and spent any time we had to be in the house upstairs, where at least it was just a dull roar. So, our new kitchen was rendered virtually useless again. The gas burners on the range would not stay on unless the fans were off and we needed those on to dry everything out. More meals at the diner down the street.

So, you might be wondering where the pictures are. The whole ordeal was just too painful to photograph. The contractor never took any responsibility for the faulty plumbing job, in fact blamed us for picking out this weird faucet that probably wasn't made right. The lesson I learned from this was never have any contractor or subcontractor do any work they cannot prove they have done before. I challenge anyone to pick up a magazine on interior design or kitchen design and not find a Dornbracht faucet in the photos. I reached out to one of our customers at work who builds really high end homes. I knew his plumber had to have put in dozens of Dornbrachts, and sure enough, that was true. Hired the experienced plumber and we haven't had a problem since.

Here is the photo of the faucet before it was installed.

The center faucet is in place. This is the pre-rinse faucet.

It took a really long time to fix all of the damage. We had to order new kicks and several cabinet doors, which take weeks to arrive. While we were waiting, the doors that were the most soaked had the time to really dry out. The one that took the most water cracked in half once it completely dried.

Here is the finished faucet, installed correctly.

Next post I'll feature the glass bar top. That is another project that we had to do ourselves. And, we were quite surprised at how we ultimately sourced out the glass.

Look for the next post soon.