Still here?

I'm sorry we haven't been better about updating, but there's really nothing to report.

The doors for the W/D closet and to the garage are finally here and getting stained.  They will hopefully go in Friday which should complete our little project.  I promise pictures when that happens.

Until then, go back to what you were doing.

The Great Cookie Experiment

If it wasn't for backorders, we'd be pretty much done. Don't these companies know that we need these things NOW! OK, not really, but still. The fridge, doors and "chandelier" are still MIA.

In the meantime, we've got trim around the big window, kitchen window and door to the living room.

We've also got an oven now! I always thought ovens were just kitchen fire safes. Who knew you could heat up just the inside and cook something! Awesome!

The chimney for the vent hood is sitting on the cooktop. It still needs to be attached, obviously.

And what better way to break in a new oven, than with COOKIES!!!

We've also done several loads of laundry without incident, in case you might be wondering what else might have happened with that. So far, so good.

Backsplash & our first water issue (that didn't take long)

When we got home last night, the backsplash was done:

The vent hood will probably go in on Thursday. The yellow wire isn't the 'look' Carla has in mind.

Doing a load of towels today, the drain hose worked its way out of the drain and proceeded to puke its soapy contents on the 4 day old wood floor. I was in the next room and caught it quickly. "Don't put wood in the kitchen" some people said. This was exactly what they had in mind with that advice. The drain hose has been zip tied to the water hoses and scolded.

To end on a lighter note, there's all kinds of stuff around due to the work. Here's a picture of an embarrassed YoYo with something on his nose. Curiosity... cat...

Tile!

So the tile guys who were supposed to get the backsplash done on Friday just showed up. At 2pm. On Tuesday.

I asked the lead guy if glass tile is any harder to work with than ceramic. He sighed heavily and said "sometimes it's really easy, other times it's really, really hard. It just depends".  Pity them. Pray for them. Keep them in your thoughts.

Pics tomorrow!

WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!!!

We didn't think there'd be anything to report until Monday, but we were wrong. So very wrong.

Simple things first that we haven't thought to include before, like... Carla's chandelier! Carla thought it'd be cute to have a little chandelier over the sink. I smiled politely and said "yes dear". At least, that's how I remember it. Anyway, it's on order and hasn't shown up yet, so the electricians installed their own version, which I much prefer:

The reason was that if we should get inspected, this will pass rather than having bare, hot wires sticking out of the ceiling. I told the plumber that we had to cut costs somewhere, and this was the result.

Since the cabinets are mostly complete, Carla decided to move the pantry items from the dining room table into the new pantry. This was a good time to purge some things, like this box of whatever it was...

...that had an expiration date of January 2004.

After dinner we decided to try out the new washer & dryer. I got a load of jeans, fired up the HAL-9000 of washers, and sat back. I commented a couple of times on how quiet it was. Then the rinse cycle started. This is a 4 second exposure of me wraslin' with the severely unbalanced washer as it tried to make its getaway.

Wikipedia defines 'whoa' as: "an exclamation predominantly used to command pack and draft animals to stop, and is most commonly applied to horses. Whoa can also refer to a general expression of surprise or amazement". We were on the other side of the kitchen when this first happened and I was saying "whoa, whoa, whoa" as I ran across the room. This tickled Carla. I think it was an appropriate exclamation considering the circumstances.

I'm not sure what the W/D combo weighs, but it was pretty light on its feet during our tango. I stopped it and took out half of the load. Same thing. I stopped it and took out everything, ran smooth as could be. 3 pair of jeans cannot be responsible for this. Something has to be wrong. Back to the manual...

When we were putting in the W/D, John looked at a tag on the back and said it's about the optional pedestal, which it was:

HOWEVER, if you kept reading, it had some important tidbits, :

Like "REMOVE SHIPPING BOLTS".

--- later that night --- 

This is what came out of the back of the washer:

For some reason, the washer ran much better after these came out of it. In this day of .10 cent electronics, why can't a single use switch be used with one of these to NOT run the washer if it isn't removed? The washer communicates with the dryer to transfer load information for drying time, but the washer can't tell me there are 4 8" bolts sticking in its backside? C'mon GE!

Anyway, everything is fine, we've done a couple of loads of laundry, the weekend is over and it's time to go back to work.

Oh, we didn't win PowerBall last night either.

Does Comcast make dryers?

The plumber came today to (hopefully) finish up.  Since it was the plumber, and nothing has gone his way yet, why should today be any different. The dishwasher had a bum leg and it took a lot of effort to get it leveled, the drain we got for the sink wouldn't connect to our disposer, and the rerouting of the gas for the cooktop was just as bad as it had looked yesterday.

While he was doing that I thought I'd reverse the door on the dryer so that it would open the same way as the washer. How hard could that be? Well, the manual has 6 pages describing the 9 parts and 25 screws that are involved in the process. It all made sense until the end when you have to put the door back on the dryer. GE must have laid off the guy responsible for tapping the holes where the hinges attach because it was just a hole in the face against metal. I rounded off the little screws trying to get them to seat before I went to Arlington ACE hardware and got some self-tapping screws. The plumber was done before I was.

Master's Flooring showed up soon after that and put the final coat on the floor. We'll be able to walk on it this evening and try out the washer/dryer load after load after load after load... 4 weeks of laundry adds up.

We're in a holding pattern until Monday when the tile backsplash goes in.

Ready... GO!

We got up at before 8am for all the fun.

John showed up first, followed by the cabinet guys, the window guy, the guy to stretch the carpet in the living room, the countertop guys, the electricians and the tile guys (who got sent away because the countertop guys weren't done and out of their way).

Right now it's 3:15pm and the cabinets are done as much as they can be right now, the widow is fixed, the carpet is stretched, the countertop is almost done and the electricians are finishing up.

Sawing/drilling granite hurt me as much as scraping the wood did.

3:45pm - Countertop guys are done! The island is loooong. I think it was just been put on the list for emergency space shuttle landing sites.

4:30 - The microwave went in fine. We're hoping that Jack Donaghy will stop by and show us how it works.

The oven however... it is so deep that it goes all the way to the back of the cabinet. You know, where the gas line and electric is. D'oh! Lots of measuring n' mumbling right now.

The plumber tomorrow will have to move that gas pipe sticking out to a spot higher up so that the oven will fit. The plumber can't catch a break. It seems like everything unexpected that has popped up has involved him, and none of it has been his fault. If he doesn't hate us yet, I'm sure he hates the house.

Gotta go to bed, but I want to leave you with a shot of the first "meal" prepared in the new kitchen!

Whadaya want?! We've only got a microwave right now! The chateaubriand is tomorrow night!