Lead Time

 Every countertop and shelf that we manufacture is hand made to order.

We estimate our lead times as accurately as possible and keep them up to date on the ordering pages for our shelves and countertops. That being said, there’s a lot that goes into estimating a lead time so lets talk about that a bit.

Our lead time isn’t just the time it takes to physically make your product. The majority of the lead time is just waiting in line for your turn at production. Since everything that we do is custom, every order is different and takes a different amount of time to complete. Sally’s order may be a single shelf, while Tom’s may be 14 large countertops. Estimating how long each of these projects will take, and then compounding that over hundreds of orders is a daunting task. We’ve been at this for many years so we’ve got a pretty good idea how long each one takes and we can estimate our lead time with a reasonable accuracy from just order volume alone, but that’s not the only factor. 

Now we factor in everything else! How does our lead time change when one of our employees is sick? Or takes their vacation time? What about lumber supply? We’re constantly ordering lumber for every top and we have exacting standards which means that we sometimes have to wait for lumber that meets our requirements. What happens when our crate lumber supplier falls behind? Or our freight company can’t fit all of our outbound shipments on the same truck and we have to wait another week for further pickups?
We do our absolute best to include all of this in our estimated lead time, but as you can hopefully tell by now it’s always an estimate. We make every countertop and shelf to an incredibly high standard and we will not lower that standard to push them out the door faster so sometimes things take a little longer than anticipated. 

It’s not all doom and gloom! On average over the last decade plus, we get orders out the door faster than our estimated lead time. We try to add a little extra time to our displayed times to give ourselves a little cushion. By and large we are ahead of schedule or on schedule, but we do occasionally fall behind for any of the reasons listed above, we truly recognize the inconvenience this causes our customers and we work diligently to catch up and bring our lead time back down to where we want it to be. 

There’s a reason you chose us for your project. We know you have options. 

We make beautiful one of a kind hand crafted countertops and shelves, and that takes time. We are a small company with highly skilled craftsmen that make exceptional products, not a massive corporation that cranks out hundreds of mediocre tops per week. 

Rest assured that we are doing everything we can to get your countertop out on time and in perfect shape. Sometimes we are faster than our lead time, and sometimes we are slower. We have shipped a lot of orders early and a few orders later than we’d like but we have never had a customer that didn’t say that it was worth the wait!

 Give us a call!

Frequently asked lead time questions:

Can you make it any faster?
We complete all orders in the order they were received, and under no circumstances will we move your top or shelf in front of other customers. Everyone is waiting their turn for production and everyone was given the same lead time estimation at time of order. We do offer a rush service, which entails bringing employees in overtime to complete rush orders. That service is only available when we have the available overtime and we have employees who are willing to give up their free time to work on your top. Feel free to call and enquire whether rush is available at the moment.

Can I check on current status?
Absolutely, we are always more than happy to speak to you about where you are in the lead time, whether we’re ahead or behind, or to give you our best estimate of when your top or shelves will be ready. Hopefully after reading this you understand that we’re giving our best estimate and are unable to give you a firm date until your project is almost complete.

Can’t you just make it faster when it’s my turn?
We take our quality very seriously, and we will not compromise that for expediency, we hand make every top and shelf to order and quality takes time. Time for glue to dry fully, time for epoxy fill to cure 100%, time for edge profiles to be hand cut, time for full hand sanding, time for finish to fully sure, time to build a custom crate for your order etc. Expediting any of these steps would require either cutting corners structurally or cutting back on quality of work, which we are simply unwilling to do. You have plenty of options, you chose us for a reason.

And my personal favorite:

If I yell at you on the phone, make threats, or explain to you why I’m more important than your other customers will that help?

We ask that you please keep in mind that we are human, and that we fully understand that your project is important, it’s important to us as well!

We complete all orders in the order they were received, and under no circumstances will we move your top or shelf in front of other customers. It doesn’t matter how rude you decide to be on the phone or how much more important your project is than those of our other customers. We treat all of our customers with great respect and greatly appreciate being treaded kindly in return. We work long hours to assure that we make a quality product at a fair price as quickly as is feasible. We will not cut corners.

             “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”.