Yesterday we had a meeting with a sales person from a company called Vorwerk. They build all sorts of home appliances and also kitchens. The guy called earlier in the week to set up an appointment but unfortunately never told us how long it would take. I guess I should have thought to ask but I just couldn’t imagine it would be so bad…but thank goodness we decided to sleep at the new house because otherwise it would have been an even longer night.
So the guy got there around 6 pm. Hubby was supposed to be there already but ended up not arriving until about 6:30 because there was a lot of traffic and a book convention going on in Frankfurt (his office is right next to the convention center so getting out when anything is going on is a nightmare). The sales guy didn’t seem interested to get started with his pitch (he’s probably gotten in “trouble” before with a husband or wife who missed something “vital” lol) but did ask if I could show him around the farm a bit. He was vaguely familiar with the house and knew the previous owner had a Bulldog tractor and so on. The sales guy actually had a Bulldog himself and was active in showing it and so on.
Eventually hubbers arrived and we were able to start the meeting. He went through his whole spiel about the quality and showed us samples of several kitchen fronts…and then he brought out a little demo cabinet and showed us a bunch of stuff about the construction….and then when we told him we were still interested, he mapped out our kitchen plan and started an estimate of the cost (€11,300 or something like that). The first two parts of this meeting, I was still interested…but as it turned 7:30 and then 8 pm…and quickly became 9, I was more than ready for him to get out of there. Ayla was going crazy because she was ready to go for a walk so I left the conversation several times to try to play with her a bit and perhaps also give him a hint that it was about time to move on. Naturally, we were mostly interested in what he had to say but since we weren’t pre-warned how long it would take and therefore it was just a bit of a shock after working all day. We expected him to be out of there by 8 at the latest…and had we known it would take that long I’m pretty sure we would have opted for a weekend appointment instead.
The ultimate result of the meeting is that we have not decided anything for that company aside from they have great quality cabinets and we are definitely keeping them in mind. We are also now a bit more motivated to go to a few other kitchen stores and the like just to see what is available. Our main concern at the moment is that most kitchens on the market now are very modern looking or just down-right ugly and we’re concerned about the modern approach with the flow of the rest of the house.
Since we’re travelling AGAIN this weekend, this time for a family birthday, we may go visit a place down near hubby’s parents which is where they bought their kitchen which they love. They also just purchased a beautiful granite countertop from the same place at a price they found to be very fair so doing plenty of research is never a bad thing…we certainly have enough time to think things over and look at everything since we still don’t have clearance on the house and even when we do, mounting the kitchen can still be one of the last tasks we do before we move in.
Staying in the house last night was really great, though, and I think we were both really happy we got to spend some time there, even if it wasn’t quality time like we were hoping.
I think I’m going to try to scan the floor plans soon which the architect has drawn up for us so you can get a better idea of what’s going on…and maybe you can lend us some of your own thoughts about it all 😉
