Very, Very, Very Good News

About two years ago, Jed was offered a subcontract to build and install all the countertops for McCoys Cabinets. We were really excited, because the contract would have meant A LOT of work. We would have been able to keep about 3 times more work without any advertising and we would have been able to charge quite a bit more for each job.

At the time, Jed was building countertops for some friends of ours from church. He had sold them material from an old tear-out, so they didn't have to pay for new material, and he resized and shaped it and polished it up like new, and he gave them an incredibly good price on the labor. He all but gave it away.

Just before he went to install the job, workers from McCoys had come and installed new cabinets. A few days after Jed had finished putting the new kitchen in, Ralph from McCoys called Jed and cancelled our contract. Jed asked him why he was cancelling the contract, and Ralph said that these people had complained about Jed. They said he had scratched their cabinets when he was putting the countertops in, and so McCoys had to replace a cabinet door for free. (Maybe a 75$ door)

Jed was so sure he did not scratch the cabinet, so he called up our neighbors to see what was going on. The phone call went something like this:

Jed: I heard you were unhappy with my work.

Neighbor: No.

Jed: Well, I heard something about me scratching your cabinets, so I was just calling to see if there was anything I could do.

Neighbor: No.

Jed: So, are you thinking I scratched your cabinets?

Neighbor: No.

And that was pretty much the extent of the conversation. I'm sure they did complain, though, because otherwise McCoys would never have even known that Jed did the tops. Now, everytime I see that couple in church I try really, really hard not to think about the tens or hundreds or thousands of dollars that incident cost us.

So by now you are probably wondering how this very boring story translates into very, very, very good news. This morning Jed got a call from the new sales manager at McCoys. We get to sub all their countertops. AND, we get to sub all their pre-fab cabinets.(That alone is probably worth quite a bit more than the original countertops contract) AND, we get comission off any custom cabinets we sell. Ten Percent. (Doesn't sound like a lot, but we are talking about 40- thousand dollar kitchens.)

This should be really, really good. Probably even I-get-a-new-house good. Lets keep our fingers crossed.