Welcome to Chez Cliff!

This is quite slick.

Perhaps to those who are "in the know" this is nothing new.  For myself, I couldn’t be happier.

For $65, Lowes (or Home Depot) will deliver whatever is purchase directly to the work site.  The limits, per LowesEmployee, don’t exist as to what can be delivered.  If it is in the store, it can be delivered.

1 nail?  Can do.

10 tons?  Can do.

Hot Pizza?  Well if you want to get your dinner from Lowes then maybe home improvement isn’t your biggest problem.

Of course there’s a lead time to be considered.  One cannot order 50+ pieces of drywall at 10:00 a.m. and expect it to be delivered by 2 p.m. 

This is something I wished I had known about sooner.  Not only could the drywall had been delivered but all the toilets, sinks (bathroom and kitchen), shower fixtures blah blah blah.  Provide and list and everything is brought.

All at once.

No multiple trips to the store.

No more playing contortionist behind my steering wheel: pushing my seat forward to make room for the toilet in the back seat.

Upon entering the home of my nemesis, a legion of trumpets heralded my arrival.  "Here is the heretic!  The man who hates Home Depot!"

Mikki is correct.  As advertised a 10′ x 10′ kitchen is a certain dollar amount.  I’m a recovering engineer and I know that 10′ x 10′ is 100 square feet.  Not so in "kitchen world".  A 10′ by 10′ kitchen is actually 20 linear feet.

New mathematics.

Believe it or nuts, I found a style of cabinets I like.  As advertised, the cabinet was $150 per linear foot.  My kitchen: 32 linear feet.  Price tag is  32 x 150 = $4800.  That is way better than the $9500 which Lowes quoted me.  And since this Home Depot accepts competitor coupons, my price would drop even further to roughly $4300.

Home Depot Employee:  For your kitchen, that will be 8 jillion 500 billion dollars.
Clifford:  I don’t want to be spanked anymore.

The Home Depot Employee did something rare: she sensed I was confused.  Was there a sliver of customer service about to come forth?

Home Depot Employee:  There’s your mistake.  The linear foot says $150 but actually you should probably double that.  Then you’ll have the more accurate price.
Clifford:  Skip boopity boo!  Multiple by 2!

At least those outrageous quotes were making sense.  Double the price of the "listed price" and you arrive at the number quoted to me by Lowes and Home Depot.

There is one local place I want to check out before I yield and purchase "off the shelf" cabinets.

Feet together.
Palms flat on the ground.
Butt in the air.
Raise the head.
Breath.

Yoga.  It’s hard to walk 10 feet in California without stumbling over a yoga studio.  Here, the competition is not between McDonald’s and Burger King but rather between yoga and pilates.  Everyone at some point has tried this sport.

Now I have as well.

My LandLord convinced me to give it a try.  A funk has been surrounding me as of late and my attitude has not been the best.  She gave me a choice: either go to yoga or her foot would find my butt.

Yoga won.

I admit I was skeptical when starting out.  The limit of my exercise was either holding a champagne flute between my fingers or an espresso cup steady while sucking in the crema.  If the yoga instructor, body by slinky, had said "OK now hold the glass of champagne in your hand." I would have aced the course.

No such luck.

In the end, the exercise routine did me good.  My back, which is the central location of my stress factory, got a nice work-out and a few good stretches.  Upon leaving, these muscles were battling back and forth; my normal "hideous hunch-back" position and my new "walk like a human" position.

Somewhere, many moons ago, this passage: Exercise the mind; exercise the body.  I think it was Asian.  In any event, the idea is to have balance between the two.  Since the gym is about as exciting as watching paint dry I figured yoga couldn’t be any worse.

It didn’t disappoint.

The cares of the project melted away: the cabinets, the bathtub, the heating . . . all the trouble spots slipped away allowing me to focus on one thing: breathing.

OK so I lied.  Twinkies also wandered around in my head.  I was hungry.

Per Mr. Kenric’s suggestion, I purchased 20 Lowes Coupons on eBay.  Each coupon gives a 10% discount of the total order.

Cool.

My out of pocket expenses for getting the coupons:  $15.

Mikki gave me a veritable laundry list of supplies needed for the renovations.  We’re now entering week 4 and the fun is about to begin.  New ceiling, new walls.

This order was for, roughly, 50 pieces of drywall along with toilets, etc. etc.  Add to that a delivery fee and the order was complete.

I slapped my 10% coupon on the counter and voila!

That’s $150 I keep in my pocket.

Anyone doing home renovations, or flipping a house, would be wise to have these Lowes Coupons handy.

For the coupons I purchased, there is a limit.  $500 at a time.  So if my order was $10,000 then I would only get the maximum discount which is $500.  Also there is an expiration date.  Fortunately mine will not expire until the end of July.

As I prepare to purchase the cabinets for the kitchen, these coupons will have an impact on the price.  For sure.

A discount of 10% could be $1,000 or $2,000.  Wouldn’t that be worth it?

I think so.