Greg got on the phone, shaking, and asked what that card said. It was a warranty card, exactly as I told him. It was also, in the paragraph he signed without reading, an acknowledgment of the unpaid balance for the work, which is all a cabinetmaker needs to file a mechanics lien.
Thirty-one years in a woodshop teaches a man that the law protects people who build things for a living, if they know how to use it. When Greg refused to pay me for six weeks of walnut cabinets and offered a thousand dollars on a six thousand dollar job, I did the one lawful thing that always works. I filed a contractors lien against his new house for the unpaid balance.
A lien clouds the title. And Greg and my sister were closing on a refinance that Monday. You cannot refinance a house with a clouded title. Their own lender called them at seven on a Sunday to tell them the closing was off until the lien was cleared.
Greg has never paid full price for anything in his life. He finally met a bill he could not haggle, because it was attached to the roof over his head.
Clearing a mechanics lien has exactly one method. You pay the contractor. Greg paid me the full six thousand two hundred fourteen dollars, and the refinance went through the following week, once the title was clean.
My sister cried when she called, and then she stopped crying when she understood I was not ruining them, I was just making Greg pay for the cabinets like anybody else would. She told me, quietly, that it was the first time in ten years she had seen Greg lose a negotiation. I think it did her good.
The cabinets are beautiful, if I do say so. Hand-cut dovetails, walnut sanded to silk, soft-close on every door. They will be in that kitchen for fifty years. And every one of them is paid for, in full, which is how a mans work is supposed to go. Family helps family. It also pays its invoices.