Just One Sink Delayed a Kitchen by Nearly Three Months

El Cerrito Remodel · Part 1 of 3

Alex Pell
Owner, Beyond Green Construction · 7 min read

In 2019, a farmhouse sink caused nearly three months of kitchen remodel delays on one of my jobs. The client hadn’t bought it yet, and by the time they tried, it was gone. Buying it was their job. Keeping them on schedule was mine, and I didn’t.

The job

This was our 2019 whole-home remodel in the El Cerrito flats, and the kitchen was a big part of it. The client had found a farmhouse sink and fallen in love with it.

The sink was owner-furnished, meaning the client was buying it themselves. Contractors mark up what they supply, sometimes steeply, and clients know it. Buying some fixtures yourself is a fair way to save money, and I’m happy to work that way. The savings come with an obligation, though: when you’re the one buying, you’re the one who has to get it ordered and on site in time, because the schedule doesn’t care who’s buying.

And a sink looks like something you drop in at the end. It isn’t. Two trades build around it before it’s ever plumbed.

The cabinetmaker needs it first. A farmhouse sink has an exposed front apron, so the base cabinet under it is built to that sink’s width, depth and front height. Change the sink and that cabinet is wrong.

The countertop fabricator needs it second, and needs the actual sink, not the spec sheet. They template the counters with the sink in place and cut the stone to it. Sinks vary a little from their published dimensions, and stone doesn’t get a second try once it’s cut. Most fabricators simply won’t template without the sink there.

What happened

The cabinet shop drawings were approved off the sink’s spec sheet, with no sink on site. On its own, that’s common. Cabinet shops build from spec sheets all the time.

The trouble was that the sink was still only a selection. The order kept getting put off, and by the time the client went to buy it, it was sold out. Not backordered. Gone.

That farm sink was oversized, and its base cabinet had been drawn wider to fit it. The client couldn’t find another farm sink they liked, so they went with a regular sink, still a big one, sized for a standard 36-inch base. A narrower sink base changed the layout around it, and two cabinets had to be remade.

Then the dominoes started to fall:

• The cabinet shop was busy too. The two new cabinets took about six weeks, and installation waited on them.
• Countertops can’t be templated until the cabinets are in, so the template date slid with them.
• When the template date came, the new sink still wasn’t on site. No sink, no template. We lost the appointment.
• The sink took another three weeks to arrive.
• By then the fabricator was slammed and booked us weeks out. The countertops lost about five weeks in all.

Good trades are booked weeks out. Miss an appointment and you don’t get the next morning; you get the next opening. Add it up and one sink cost the kitchen close to three months.

That one was on me

The client made the call to wait, and buying the sink was their responsibility. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But owner-furnished doesn’t mean the builder stops paying attention. Part of managing a project is reminding clients what’s theirs to handle and keeping them honest about it. That part was mine, and I let it slide.

Back then I gave clients a lot of room. Nothing said the sink had to be bought by a certain date or the schedule would move. I’d bring it up, they’d say they were still deciding, and I’d let it go another week. It never felt urgent. It never does, until the sink is gone.

It didn’t blow up all at once. It unfolded slowly, one reasonable-sounding delay at a time, and I let every one of them through.

Selected isn’t ordered

A selection is a decision. An order is a box in the garage. The schedule only cares about the box.

The farm sink had been picked. It was drawn into the cabinet plans. Everyone was building as if it existed, and for this job it didn’t, not until somebody paid for it. By then it was gone.

How I prevent kitchen remodel delays now

Today every job we build runs on the Beyond Green Project Portal. On the client side, it has everything you need to get through the job, and you know exactly what’s happening at any given time. Selections, the schedule, documents, change orders: all of it lives in one place, and the client and my team see the same thing.

Selections are the part this story is about. Every finish has a decision date and an order date tied to the schedule, set by what gets built around it. The client sees the options, the budget and a countdown to the day the choice is due.

A sink that a cabinet and a countertop depend on is due long before either one, and the schedule shows it.

Owner-furnished items go in the Project Portal like everything else, with the same dates and the same reminders. The client sees what’s due and when; we see what’s ordered, what’s shipped and what’s on site. When a date is coming up, the client hears about it early, not after it has slipped.

The client still gets to wait if they want to. They just see exactly what waiting will cost, while there’s still time to choose. On one of our jobs today, a sink like that one would be chosen, bought and sitting on site before the cabinet drawings were signed. I couldn’t have said that in 2019.

What I’d tell anyone planning a kitchen

• Ask your builder how they track selections. Not whether, how. If the answer is “we’ll figure it out as we go,” that was me in 2019.
• If you’re buying some finishes yourself, treat the dates as yours. Owner-furnished is a fair way to save. It just moves the deadline onto your plate, and a good builder will keep reminding you it’s there.
• If you love one specific product, buy it now. Things sell out and get discontinued. The one-off piece you found may not be there when you’re ready.
• Anything a trade builds around should be on site before that trade needs it. The countertop fabricator will ask for the sink at template, and the answer has to be yes.

The verdict

One sink cost a kitchen nearly three months, and the fix was never a better sink. It was a builder who holds the line on selections, including the ones the client is buying. I wasn’t that builder in 2019. That kitchen is a big part of why I am now.

If you’re planning a kitchen and want selections handled this way from day one, start with how we approach kitchen remodeling.

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About the author

Alex Pell

I grew up in the Colorado mountains, the kid rebuilding CD players and racing a dog sled I’d built myself. (My great-grandfather held more than 100 patents; it runs in the family.) I was on my first jobsite at 17, building straw bale homes, then apprenticed as a carpenter, electrician and plumber, and started Beyond Green in 2017. Here I write about what’s behind the finished photos: the calls forced by budget, code and the site, and the ones that come from 25 years of seeing what holds up and what doesn’t.

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