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Re: Today is a busy day 

By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (1)
Thu, 10 Jun 21 3:30 AM | 46 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 18523 of 58662
(This msg. is a reply to 17954 by Decomposed)
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Re: 'Floor & Decor, they had BEAUTIFUL slabs of "Peacock Slate,"'This won't be the most interesting story you guys have ever heard, but at least it's something. If you get bored, feel free to skip to chapter 2.

I got a call Tuesday that some yellow ceramic tiles I'd been waiting on had come in, so I figured I should open the seven boxes of "Peacock" slate already in my possession and return the pieces I don't like while picking up the yellow tiles. I have to do returns within 90 days of the purchase date, after all, and I don't go to Nashua that often (it's a 90 minute drive.) Floor & Decor is good about returns but I'd just as soon take the rejects back quickly.

The next day, Wednesday, I headed to the barn and unloaded all seven boxes so I could review them in a place with some space. You might be surprised at their weight. The slate is unevenly cut, but most pieces are between ½ and ¾ of an inch thick. They're all 2 square feet. This site https://www.builddirect.com/blog/density-of-slate/ says they should weigh between 14.6 and 22 lbs apiece which doesn't surprise me. Six pieces per box and . . . it was a lot of work for this guy with a less than perfectly knit chest.

I spread the slate out on the floor and picked out the rejects- those with chipped corners, bad cratering, visible grooves, snapped in two, etc. When I was done, I had 28 keepers and 14 returns. That's an awful failure rate if you think about it.
33.3 percent. My builder may be pickier than I was and eliminate even more but he wasn't there at the time or when I stopped by this morning either. I'll assume that I've got 28 good ones. I only need 24, but I also need some spares - just in case. I decided to buy one more box of six.

So, the chick at the returns counter looked at the first piece in my pile of slate and said, "I'm not sure I'll be able to take this one back."

Heh. It was one of the MILDLY defective pieces.

I laughed. "All I did was open the box. That's how it was! It's just a flakey piece. Most of the others are a lot worse!"

She called someone from the "stone" department. A young kid, Christian, came over and IMMEDIATELY told the Returns gal that my returns were for valid reasons. He told me, "This stuff does not travel well at all. We have a ton of problems with it."

So that made me feel better.

I told him that I was hoping to buy another box once I was done with these returns. He then offered to go pick out six pieces for me so I wouldn't have to return to the store again. That was cool.

After I got my money back, my wife headed to the special orders department to get the yellow tiles that had come in. I went to the back to find Christian. He had a box out and said we should open it to make sure it was good. We did and . . . ONE HUNDRED PERCENT REJECTS. He opened another and it may have had one piece that was okay. We ended up opening six boxes to find six pieces. 83% failure. And most of the time, he was the one doing the rejecting.

He said at the end that he'd keep the cart full of bad pieces to show his manager. I have a feeling there's a vendor out there who'll be getting a call tomorrow.

No matter. I've got my pieces. As long as my builder doesn't reject more than ten of them, I should be good to go.

After that, we decided to go eat. My wife looked up the Golden Corral in Manchester and . . . Google Maps said "This restaurant has been permanently closed."

%@$!

But we were already headed that direction so we decided to continue and see if the report was an error. It turned out that it was and that the management was rather displeased with Google Maps. Their suspicion is that an unhappy former employee may have pranked them. Yeah, some prank. It probably cost them quite a bit of money.

We provided our own update to the restaurant's Google Maps page. I don't know if it did any good but this evening the restaurant is not longer described as "permanently closed."




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Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months


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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Today is a busy day
By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE
Sat, 29 May 21 3:52 AM 		Msg. 17954 of 58662

micro:

Re: “you guys are going to be on the road awhile today! Be safe!”Thanks! We had a really busy but good day. New Hampshire has three cities in close proximity: Concord, Manchester and Nashua. We went to all three.

In Concord, we returned 15 square feet of glass tile to Lowes and got our $145 back. On a lark, I asked my wife to see if there were any tile stores in Concord. It's the state capital, after all. She said "No, but there's a Floor & Decor store in Nashua, 30 miles away." As we drove, she verified that the store seemed to have yellow ceramic tile... close to what we wanted, not exact, but at an outstanding price. The site listed yellow wall tiles for $1.49 each. We got to the store and found the tiles had to be ordered and by the box. There are 66 tiles per box - but the price was just 78¢ apiece!

Putting that in perspective, it's $2.34 per square foot. The tiles we'd returned to Lowes had been $9.68 per square foot. And at our local tile store - which had tiles I considered "perfect" - we'd have spent $19.50 per square foot.

66 tiles (22 square feet) is far more than we need for the wall behind and over our oven (the tile is a splash guard). In fact, 10 square feet will probably cover it. But Floor & Decor says we can return individual tiles we don't use. So I won't be wasting ANY money. It's great! What would have cost us $195.00 at our local specialty store will instead be $23.40.

While there, we checked out slate flooring too. I need slate beneath the two wood stoves because slate is far stronger than ceramic tile and wood stoves weight a ton. I'm exaggerating, but someone told me that a big one can run 700 pounds, big enough that two strong men can't lift it. It can easily break ceramic tile (but doesn't always. My current wood stove sits on ceramic tile.)

I don't remember the price of the slate at the specialty tile store, but think it was in the ballpark of $25 per square foot. At Floor & Decor, they had BEAUTIFUL slabs of "Peacock Slate," close to an inch thick, each being 2 square feet, for just $4.78 each. I took seven boxes of six slabs. Now that I'm home, I think I should have taken two more boxes. Not only should the wood stove bases be a little larger than I first thought, but extra boxes will also give me leave to choose the nicest slabs and return the others. No two slabs are alike after all, and just look at them in the photo below! Many are incredibly pretty. Ah well. I'll be out that way again soon. After all, the yellow wall tiles had to be ordered and the store doesn't have free delivery.

The slate was $200.76. At the specialty store I first checked, that same 42 square feet would have been about $1,050. I like the slate enough that I'm now thinking about doing the entire foyer in it. Unfortunately, that many boxes could exceed the carrying capacity of my wife's car...

So that was Concord and Nashua. When we were leaving, I had my wife check for any nearby restaurants. She's the one with the smart phone, after all. I had her look first for Chinese food. Then I said, "Hey, how about buffets? Are there any?" And... son of a gun... there was one - in Manchester! The restaurant opened less than a year ago and was only 20 minutes from the floor store. The food was great, the restaurant pristine and there were only about 20 other diners. I have a feeling I'll be going to it again.

Images of the slate and buffet follow. (The $2.39 you see on the slate is the per square foot price. Each slab is 2 square feet.)

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