GridItem properties inaccurate?

This is an odd issue, but I’ve been stalled on it for a while. I have a GridItem that I’ve added to a Grid. According to the debugger, the gridItem has a width and height. However, whenever I try and set a variable equal to the width or height, the variable’s value is 0. Can you force an update on a display object or something that will cause the values to actually be what they say they are? I know that sounds odd, but I can’t figure it out for the life of me.

var x:Number = cell.width; // cell.width = 27 according to debugger.
trace(x) -> 0

Thanks in advance,
John