Wednesday, September 21, 2016

This is the story of my slab.



This has been one of those forever projects. It hasn't been easy to find the right materials. We did the hearth like two years ago. Mr S. and I really wanted a product that looked like concrete without having to use concrete. Lately a small trend has been "leatherd" granite. Which means it doesn't have a shiny finish. It has more of a matte finish. I didn't like how much light was reflected with a shiny finish. Especially when it's on a wall. It reflects every light you have on. I find that annoying.

We were just going to try and put tiles there that looked like concrete but I didn't like all the lines. It made too much visual noise.

Anyway, a couple of months ago we ran across a slab that looked almost exactly like concrete. But they didn't want to sell a half slab. Which is all I needed. One day I walked in asking if they ever got smaller full slabs, and the girl was basically in the process of quitting. So she gave me a fuck this, lets burn this popcorn stand down, price. The price of a full slab was almost what I'd previously paid for a half slab.

In a good economy it would have taken me two weeks to get delivery. But I later found out they were not moving my slab until they had a full load. Which is still normal. But I was starting to understand the economy wasn't moving as well as it had in the past because my delivery date was "some day".

At first I was pretty okay about it because my fabricator was backed up. But the whole slab purgatory was starting to go on so long my fabricator took pity on me and volunteered to go pick it up.  Last night they installed it at 7:00 at night.

There is no more contractor 30. In the old days contractors basically cut off at 3:30. If you went to Home Depot or OSH around that time you'd see them all lined up getting supplies for the next day. Now contractors work well into the night.

The whole experience made me really feel like inflation could take off quite sharply.  Products still are not moving as normal. But workers - you aren't going to be able to pull that much more productivity out of them. They are stretched thin. It's really been this while for a while, but I can't really be sure of a trend until I experience it myself. Then I can say - yeah - that's really happening.

Even in the white collar world companies are starting to feel pressure to retain employees by giving them stock compensation again. I really never felt wage inflation would take off until engineers started getting the same perks they always used to get in The Valley. And from everything I'm seeing lately is that wage pressure is starting to stir.

Now I have to design a mantel for this thing.



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