Cornell Drawers from Hell: BioQuip, Lowes, and Home Depot
Nov 2, 2020 5:26:17 GMT -8
SoCalMountainman and kevinkk like this
Post by exoticimports on Nov 2, 2020 5:26:17 GMT -8
Back in August my Cornell drawers exceeded maximum capacity. Typically I donate or sell unneeded specimens, but I had no time.
BioQuip offered free shipping on orders, so I broke down and ordered the Cornell Drawer Kit, despite having always tried to keep specimen count restricted to storage capacity.
What a nightmare.
A month after placing the order, and in dire need of the BioQuip kit, I'd received nothing. I sent an email. No response. A week later I called and was told "one more month"!!
Finally, two months after I placed the order the BioQuip drawer kit arrived...sort of.
After sanding, staining, and coating the drawer sides, time to get to work.
I went to Lowes for glass, and waited 20 minutes for a 90 year old employee to show up. He didn't know anything about glass, and less about how to calculate proper cutting to get the right size glass out of a sheet of glass. Besides which, they had such limited glass it was going to cost me over $60! So I left.
The local Ace hardware doesn't carry glass, so they sent me to one that's a 30 mile round trip. But I did it, and $23 and 1.5 hours later had accurately cut glass.
Finally, on to the build! I've build many of these drawers, and know all the little tricks, so I can wack them out pretty fast...if they are produced properly. With everything spread out across the kitchen floor (much to the wife's chagrin) I assembled the first drawer sides and glass.
DAMN! Upon placing the hardboard bottom, it was 1/4" (about 6.5mm) TOO SHORT! It's supposed to be 18.25" not 18.0" long!
Now, the correct step would be to put the corrective responsibility back on BioQuip. But after already waiting two months, and with drawer pieces all over the kitchen, on a Friday, I could not wait.
I looked online and the local Lowes reporting having nine 4x8 sheets of hardboard in stock, so the next day I did the 30 minute round trip to Lowes. Upon looking for the hardboard, there was none. The wood guy shrugged it off as typical. He did locate a pallet in inventory, so we looked at it; despite having the right label, it looked like it was mislabeled as the sheets looked too thick. But, to be safe, I waited the 40 minutes it took to get a forklift and bring it down. Yup, wrong size. Two hours wasted.
The Home Depot website reported 50 4x8 sheets in stock, so off to there, another 20 mile round trip. They did have it! The wood guy measures it three times to cut it to the 18.25" I need. THREE TIMES. He makes a first test cut. Watching him from about a meter behind, something's not right...I step forward and ask him to measure again. Uh huh. He cut it as 16.25".
After correcting the length, he starts cutting multiple lengths...which somehow are 18.5" not 18.25". So has to re-cut them.
Having brought an original hardboard BioQuip bottom, I line it up with the Home Depot bottoms, figuring they should be the same but 0.25" longer. WTF! Not one is plumb! I had him cut a half dozen more hoping that some would be close, which left me with about 4x4 which I brought home "just in case." Meanwhile, while he was working on my cuts, he stopped twice to do different jobs. Two hours wasted.
Finally, having arrived home, time to build drawers. And, I found NOT ONE of the Home Depot cut bottoms fit! Some too long, others so misaligned they overlapped on one side, and left a gap on the other. So that was a total waste of time and money.
Still facing a kitchen full of half-completed drawers (Day Three- it's now Sunday night), I broke down and used the faulty bottoms from BioQuip. I could just barely get them overlapping the drawer lip if I was careful. But I did it. So now I have six BioQuip Cornell drawers with 1/8" void all around the bottom panel.
Never again. What a nightmare. And now when I look at those drawers it's always going to annoy me that they aren't built right, and the time and money I wasted.
Chuck
BioQuip offered free shipping on orders, so I broke down and ordered the Cornell Drawer Kit, despite having always tried to keep specimen count restricted to storage capacity.
What a nightmare.
A month after placing the order, and in dire need of the BioQuip kit, I'd received nothing. I sent an email. No response. A week later I called and was told "one more month"!!
Finally, two months after I placed the order the BioQuip drawer kit arrived...sort of.
After sanding, staining, and coating the drawer sides, time to get to work.
I went to Lowes for glass, and waited 20 minutes for a 90 year old employee to show up. He didn't know anything about glass, and less about how to calculate proper cutting to get the right size glass out of a sheet of glass. Besides which, they had such limited glass it was going to cost me over $60! So I left.
The local Ace hardware doesn't carry glass, so they sent me to one that's a 30 mile round trip. But I did it, and $23 and 1.5 hours later had accurately cut glass.
Finally, on to the build! I've build many of these drawers, and know all the little tricks, so I can wack them out pretty fast...if they are produced properly. With everything spread out across the kitchen floor (much to the wife's chagrin) I assembled the first drawer sides and glass.
DAMN! Upon placing the hardboard bottom, it was 1/4" (about 6.5mm) TOO SHORT! It's supposed to be 18.25" not 18.0" long!
Now, the correct step would be to put the corrective responsibility back on BioQuip. But after already waiting two months, and with drawer pieces all over the kitchen, on a Friday, I could not wait.
I looked online and the local Lowes reporting having nine 4x8 sheets of hardboard in stock, so the next day I did the 30 minute round trip to Lowes. Upon looking for the hardboard, there was none. The wood guy shrugged it off as typical. He did locate a pallet in inventory, so we looked at it; despite having the right label, it looked like it was mislabeled as the sheets looked too thick. But, to be safe, I waited the 40 minutes it took to get a forklift and bring it down. Yup, wrong size. Two hours wasted.
The Home Depot website reported 50 4x8 sheets in stock, so off to there, another 20 mile round trip. They did have it! The wood guy measures it three times to cut it to the 18.25" I need. THREE TIMES. He makes a first test cut. Watching him from about a meter behind, something's not right...I step forward and ask him to measure again. Uh huh. He cut it as 16.25".
After correcting the length, he starts cutting multiple lengths...which somehow are 18.5" not 18.25". So has to re-cut them.
Having brought an original hardboard BioQuip bottom, I line it up with the Home Depot bottoms, figuring they should be the same but 0.25" longer. WTF! Not one is plumb! I had him cut a half dozen more hoping that some would be close, which left me with about 4x4 which I brought home "just in case." Meanwhile, while he was working on my cuts, he stopped twice to do different jobs. Two hours wasted.
Finally, having arrived home, time to build drawers. And, I found NOT ONE of the Home Depot cut bottoms fit! Some too long, others so misaligned they overlapped on one side, and left a gap on the other. So that was a total waste of time and money.
Still facing a kitchen full of half-completed drawers (Day Three- it's now Sunday night), I broke down and used the faulty bottoms from BioQuip. I could just barely get them overlapping the drawer lip if I was careful. But I did it. So now I have six BioQuip Cornell drawers with 1/8" void all around the bottom panel.
Never again. What a nightmare. And now when I look at those drawers it's always going to annoy me that they aren't built right, and the time and money I wasted.
Chuck
