If you contracted me to install a sink you had, it would be a month before I could get to you. I've raised my rates and the backlog persists. New truck, new hire, nothing seems to help.

To be sure, there are a variety of supply chain issues in residential construction including appliances. Some are due to covid-19 including lockdowns or factory shutdowns in the U.S. as well as countries that supply components or assemblies to American manufacturers (it's amazing how much foreign content there is in an "American" home.) Some are supply/demand related, like demand for Joseph's sink replacement skills. Folks looking to do anything on a competitive bid basis are likely to find few contractors willing to invest the effort to produce a bid. And if they aren't already busy enough to say "no" you might want to rethink having them do your project.

Rapidly escalating prices for commodity materials like steel, lumber, and drywall make this a scary time to price new home construction on a fixed-contract price basis and to a lesser extent, a scary time to price remodeling projects.

Put simply, this is a really really bad time to start a new house build... Unless the cost of the house is but a rounding error on your personal cast statement. :-)

It might be a good time to do a lot of research and planning though so when the market stabilizes you are ready to jump in and take advantage of it.

Another thing causing cascading delays in the supply chain: there are still a ton of container ships stuck off the coast of Long Beach who can't dock while they're waiting to be unloaded, and that problem has persisted for the past few months. And then you don't have empty containers going back across to get refilled. Those containers contain products, and raw materials for products, and packaging for raw materials for products. It's going to be a while before we get through this...

The backlog of consumer goods was the subject of the lead article in today's Wall Street Journal. Also contributing to the mess (besides enormous demand, Covid shutdowns all along the pipeline, and distribution bottlenecks): last month's deep freeze in the Oil Belt has made petrochemical products scarce: plastics, paints, fabrics are in short supply now.

And this was new to me: low interest rates have turned everybody into a house flipper or wanting a house to buy for rental purposes. That means sprucing up the place to make it attractive to buyers/renters, and that means...more demand on appliances & home improvement products.

Prices are going up: chips, copper, plastic, fabric, & of course lumber, shingles, siding. I'm in the process of buying an oven. I need to get on my salesperson to lock in my price now, even if I don't get the oven until autumn. That will eat into the one year warranty, but I was planning to purchase an extended warranty from the manufacturer anyway.

I'm sorry. :( I have heard the exact same thing from a close friend who did an extensive remodel to their house. They started well over a year ago too and I know they've suffered through all kinds of supply problems.

They had the place completely demo'ed just as covid started taking off and so had no option but to forge ahead. It's been a wild ride for them too.

I guess we lucked out on our appliances. We went to Lowe's last weekend and a new Whirlpool fridge and Bosch dishwasher are being delivered tomorrow.

We are postponing our (DIY) master bath remodel a few months, in hopes that prices and supply will settle down a bit.

My Husband is a Union Carpenter who does commercial remodels. Their suppliers can't get drywall mud until November.

I also predict other issues because the same Texas companies also produced soda ash and HCL Acid. So the steel processing business will be affected too.