Warning about an online store - update

Jo,

Good grief! What astonishingly bad manners not to mention absolutely horrible "customer service". "please provide correct address" . . . Indeed! Thanks for the warning about this business, what was the name again??

You're a better person than I am, I think I would have just contacted my credit card company and complained and gotten them to do a charge back.

Judie

I refuse to do the confrontation thing. I agree with Judie, I just contact my credit card company and get a charge back. Takes care of the whole thing. That fabric sounds adorable, but difficult to replace. Sorry your order is so mangled. I have only ever had one bad mess up like that. I usually order from Fabric Shack. It's just the best . Their service is fabulous and their cuts generous. They usually throw a little something in when the order is over $30. One time a package of nice hand stitching needles, another time some needle threaders. Just a nice touch.

Sunny

Still customer service but along another vein.

Our new couch was delivered today and we still don't have a couch. Yes, you read that right. Instead of checking out the width of the door, the delivery men just "shoved" it through, tore off the screen door latch, ripped the fabric on the back bottom edge, only about a 1/2 inch, and the mattress was not the right one. In the midst of calling the store while they were putting the legs on, the power went out and so did the phone, so out came the cell phone. I stated that I didn't care if they could "fix" the rip, even if it couldn't be seen, that I wanted a blemish free brand new couch, including the double mattress of regular and air components. After all that is what I paid for. So, out the door went the "new" couch and a replacement is to be delivered Saturday. All this after ordering it in June, and lo and behold they just happen to have another in the warehouse. I was repeatedly asked if I was sure that was the mattress I ordered, after he insisted that my order number was in the upper left corner and I told him there were no numbers there but my name and his store, but there were numbers on the right. No, I need numbers from the left. There are none, yes there are, no there are not, try this number. Guess what, it worked. Go figure.

Customer service is a lost art I am sure. Hopefully in a new class I am teaching this semester I can teach a little and get my students thinking about what is good customer service. I won't hold my breath though I will try.

Steven Alaska

DH and I are entertained. It's easy to amuse old folks. Neighbor bought a new couch and assorted other big brown leather parts - a couple of recliners fit (or do not fit) in somewhere in the arrangement thereof. Delivery guys don't have much of a chance. The stuff will not come through the front door. With some fearsome heft, they slammed it in. Knocked one heck of a hole in the wall just in front of the door. We already know that handicapped sidewalks and doors and such require a certain width. How hard could it be for furniture stores to figure out that 'entrance' might be a problem? Polly

I 'get it' about trying to fit furniture thru the exterior doors- me, too! I had to replace the front door in my lovely old home. The original doors with the wavy glass and skeleton keys were less than 30 in. wide- my new front door is 36 in. wide. (The ex and I tried moving in a chair and discovered how narrow both exterior doors were and that the rest of my furniture wasn't going to fit thru those doors.) And that new front door was installed in a panic the day before the movers arrived with all my furniture. But you have to wonder- in my home's 90 years didn't anybody else *ever* have 'normal' sized sofas? And in those same 90 years didn't anybody ever think to put in some kind of walkway to the front door???

I did both!

Leslie & The Furbabies in miserably HOT & HUMID MO.

I think a lot of the furniture now is much more bulky than it was even

40 years ago. We shopped for a new recliner a few years ago to replace the one we bought when we got married in 1967. Almost everything was much bigger than what we had -- and bigger than the space we had for it. When we moved into our condo, we decided to use the second bedroom for a den, so the hide-a-bed (also from our early years) went in there. It fit through the outside doors just fine, but because of the it had to go around corners, etc., we couldn't get it into the room through the door. Fortunately we're on the ground floor and could take it in through the window. That's one reason we waited 8 or 9 years to replace the flooring in that room! I have no idea how one would ever get a box spring in there.

Julia in MN

I love you home, it is so cosy. Well done on the renovations.

Leslie, I love your home. So sweet and beautiful. Did you do all that work yourself? If so, come on out and spend a few weeks with me. I know how to keep you busy and I'll give you room and board for free while you just enjoy fixing my silly bathrooms up. Something that probably will NEVER be done because some other project is always more important/urgent. And then the money runs out. LOL Your new/old house is just perfect. It looks so homey and comfortable. I'm glad to be able to think of you and your fur babies in such a pretty place.

Hugs, Sunny

Hi Leslie,

I expect both. Furniture goes through style (and size) changes like other fashions. Nowadays we see a lot of "oversized" furniture; bigger with more padding looks/is comfier, and a lot of furniture

*was* smaller years ago.

Are there any really old pics of the house from years ago? I'm wondering if there may have been a walkway at one time that was torn out due to deterioration but never replaced for economic/lifestyle reasons. The house next to ours now has no front walk; it was built by the fellow who lived in it all his life (who just passed last year) and he never used the front door anyway, so he didn't see any point.

Smaller doors were once more common too; some houses even had special wider "coffin doors". Someone in this group may have one of those in an old house. I've seen a lot of houses that had them but they have been torn out and walled up along with replacing the main exterior doors. I know of an old farmhouse where a chimney was built up against the old coffin door. FWIW, most codes/standards nowadays call for 36" - 48" exterior doors, but we're seeing more (even wider) double front entrances (60" - 72") in some places to accommodate the newer larger furniture, pianos, and other massive (by yesteryear standards) furnishings. I know of one near here which is a good thing because the wife has a couple of full-sized grand pianos. They might have gone through a smaller door, but the double-wide sure made it easier with less risk to the instruments.

One of the fascinating facets of the remodeling business (for me) was seeing some of the things that were done in building older (pre- building code) homes. I once got into one in New England that was built in the 19th c. by a sea captain. He knew ship construction, so he built his house with ship dimensioned timber (studs & joists were all oak, and a full 3" wide by full 4" or something...) to ship construction standards (I don't recal the specifics, but I think the studs were on 12" or 20" centers - something really strange) that made remodeling the place more of an adventure than usual. The house had a "widow's walk" too. Our first house had a built-in bookcase in the middle of one wall that didn't look "right" to me. I did some exploring and found that some previous owner (out of 12) had sealed off a pair of *beautiful* pocket doors, which were still there in the wall with their hardware! We ripped out the bookcase and restored the pocket doors. I also found that the outlets on that wall had been wired with lamp cord, so I fixed that hazard as well. Unfortunately, I could *not* replace the cast-iron & tiled fireplace that had been torn out and discarded under the back porch. :-(

Doc

quoted text -

Some older houses have double doors as a front entrance, but those double doors are only about 24" each, making the opening 48" when both doors are opened.

Bonnie, in Middletown, VA

There is a house several doors up from us that had just such a double door - when they wanted to replace it, a notice went up giving people time to object to this since we live in a conservation area. I suppose no one objected, or not enough people objected, or it was overturned, because there is now a modern, soulless white door on the property that looks like about a hundred other houses in town.

We have something similar in our kitchen (the house was built in 1870 or slightly earlier), and want to get it operational again. It has a copper reservoir for heating up water while you have a fire going. We want to try that out as well, but I suspect it will only be enough water for a very small bath, or for a very small child to enjoy!

-- Jo in Scotland