Grout hits the tile

Did I mention our new dude is fast? He told us he'd be done Monday. Finished in half the time.

Tile hits the floor

I have been eagerly anticipating this day for a while now...The previous post, by the way, featured a shot of this tile on the floor of the tile store. Here it is on our floor, by golly!

The whole job will be done at the end of Monday, barring any unforeseen stuff. This is a new team of contractors, who are so far giving us much less reason to think that the types of unforeseen stuff that plagued our last hired crew are going to continue to crop up.

Next steps are some new appliances, then countertops and cabinets, and a cool "bar" thing in the breakfast room which the new contractor designed (in about 30 seconds—dude is fast). The exact order in which these "chunks" of kitchen will appear is not yet clear, but in the coming weeks and months, the bulk of our penny-saving will be for the kitchen-laundry-breakfast area of the castle. Finally!

Kitchen tile = mission accomplished

We could be slippin' across these gorgeous things in our socks as early as a week or two from now. Another quantum leap after a much-slowed process of door and window restoration and sporadic painting...(Neither of those projects are finished, by the way. These things take as long as they take, it turns out.)

Beyond ceilings

Eagerly Anticipating

This fridge that will arrive at Monadnock in the next couple of months. Inspired by Amy Crawford's cutie pie fridge -its stainless steel with french doors and a bottom freezer.

Our Final Choice

Our final choice for granite in the kitchen and breakfast nook is Granite Expo's "Black Galaxy". Black goes with everything, plus it can also take lots of wear and tear without looking busted. Ideally,we would get this stone without bullnose edges but I'm willing to go with this one even if we can't. All appliances will be stainless steel.

More night-time rollin'

Renie works best after dark.

Two rooms, one coat each.

Which kitchen plan ends up the more prescient?

The one I tried most valiantly, most geekily, to work up on the IKEA kitchen-planning web app? The one you can boot up in-store and show them exactly where you want your Bløöp—on top of your Sketå and next to the third Lampke on the left:

Or the one made by the guy who just came over to place a bid on some work—who's designed tons of kitchens before and memorizes his plans as he writes them? He sketched this, tore it out and handed it to me for keeps, telling me that he's got hundreds of kitchen plans stored in his mind and no longer needed the written reminder:

Time'll tell.

Painting update, mostly ceilings

It seems absurd, but it's true: Tomorrow is my first day of the 2010-2011 school year. So things are going to slow down for me considerably when it comes to the painting routines. Renie's got a few weeks of sanctuary left and she'll be holding it down with the rollers while I'm typing up syllabi...



Music: Rollin' Blues, by John Lee Hooker

By the way, the nasty kitchen ceiling vent in this video was clogged up with plenty of seed-pods from the big tree out back (who still needs a name). I thought it was a mighty cool Darwinian trick that a tree could sneak its DNA all the way into our kitchen. Through the roof, the ceiling, and everything! Talk about a will to survive.