Kenneth and Kevin were going to have a peaceful day...

but I decided to "work from home" today. This meant that I checked in on Kenneth and Kevin a lot, said things looked great a lot, distracted them from important trim measurements, startled them while they were using the miter saw, and in general proved a nuisance and probably a danger to their physical well-being. I guess if this were a Three's Company set up I might be Mr. Furley.

Lots more crown molding went up today and some base cabinets were set! Kenneth put some of the resourced butcherblock countertop (thanks Beth!) on top to get a feel for the space. I think it feels great! Mostly because I spent two hours of my "work at home" day pretending to bake cookies and, in a truly ambitious move, make quiche. I think the imaginary crust came out positively flaky and tender, if I do say so myself. Next up is a pretend Bouche de Noel log.

A view from the other side of the room. Note I have my snickerdoodles cooling to the left of the sink.
The oven in which I prepared the baked goodies:

Our coronation

We returned to the house on Tuesday to find our hallway filled with building materials. We felt at home. Having it empty of 2x4's/PVC pipe/plywood had felt entirely too roomy and bourgeois.


Kenneth and crew carted the miter saw to the house today and began doing fancy trim work! Crown molding went up in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. We feel positively regal now:
A closer look at our royal woodwork bling:

Woody has also finished sanding and painting a TON of cabinets, among them the beautiful double sink vanity for the Jack n' Jill bathroom:


And, in a development that has made me positively giddy, the laundry room is tiled! Soon we will have laundering facilities in the house! Oh to not have the long wiry hairs of strangers turn up in my underwear. I can't wait...

Even better than the FedEx man bearing a Zappos delivery

are the Sears guys bearing our appliances! Finally! We bought these back when Oprah was still thin and the economy was still healthy. And then we exerted the kind of self-control I've only ever seen in movies with sage old guys who intone "grasshopper" to "focus."

We waited through October and flew to Vegas for my birthday dinner, we waited through November and drove to Maryland to cook Thanksgiving dinner, we waited through December and drove to Atlanta for Christmas dinner. In between, we waited for our hot dogs at B'ton's J&K Cafe while the proprietor told me a hot dog with mustard, relish, and onions was "nasty" in light of the absence of her "famous" chili. We waited for our depressing hot wings without hot sauce at KFC while one worker told another that her $450/month rent added up to "totally" more in a year than his $20,000 a semester tuition. We waited for a table at B'ton's fine eating establishment the Four Seasons, only to find that Russian dressing can be served in a magnitude that renders the lettuce but a garnish. But the waiting is over! Kind of! Well, at least, we can wait for a kitchen while caressing the sweet sweet cardboard that protects our fridge, dishwasher, and range:

We got a tantalizing glimpse of the fridge as they had to remove it from the box to get it through the back door:
Maddy went into beagle guard dog mode when we tried to cover up the fridge again. But as you can see, beagle guard dog mode doesn't depart much from her usual general bewilderment/ jonesing for kibble expression.

My version of an island getaway

It was difficult to find the surface area to set up both my deck chair and my umbrella drink on the kitchen island. But not impossible. Thankfully I'm flexible and I didn't mind having the pipe for the prep sink up...well, nevermind.


Woody and Kenneth were decidedly peeved by my personal Sandals resort and shooed me off to sun myself on the junked water heater out back like I usually do. How rude.

The kitchen cabinets are only temporarily mounted so all can be checked for fit. They will come back down and receive another coat of paint. While I contemplated latching myself onto an upper cabinet and getting my best Berkeley protest yowl on to prevent them from taking them down, I decided to be mature. A Tylenol PM at 2 in the afternoon helped with this decision.


Once the cabinets are screwed in for good, we get to measure for countertops!

Down and grout

Woody spent part of the final day of his grueling long "weekend" grouting almost the entire kitchen -- it has dried to a nice taupey gray (emphasis on the gray since I really have no idea what taupe is, it just says it on the 50-lb bags we lugged into the house last night.) This will allow Kenneth and Co. to set our base cabinets and measure for countertops hooray!

Cabinet hearings

While these folks all just passed muster to join the new presidential cabinet, I guarantee you that tough questions from these guys pale in comparison to the dreaded HVLP in extracting the truth from ambitious policy wonks. Behold!


Do you not quake in your wingtips at the sight of the High Volume Low Pressure Paint Sprayer? Do you not tearfully admit that, yes, there was a period during which you thought a headband was a good fashion choice? Do you not concede that, true, you do play a doctor on TV? Policy wonks, policy away, but we dare you to tangle with this cabinet!

You may be able to burnish your murky reputations but you can never apply a nice even coat of high gloss! Never!

Woody, on the other hand, wielded the HVLP with aplomb today. And while we didn't perform community service per se today, as suggested by the descendants of MLK, we did do our neighbors a service by getting ourselves a few steps closer to a kitchen. Thus reducing the number of days they will have to witness our hygenically questionable cooking habits at the grill.

Kitchen Aids

Woody spent all weekend tiling the kitchen with some great help from Brad! Here you see the result of their handiwork with a wetsaw in subfreezing weather. They kind of looked like this guy when they came inside:

Thankfully they staved off hypothermia with Woody's good idea of boiling the water they put in the wetsaw. This may sound like a recipe for scalding disaster...but it was so friggin cold that it worked out quite well. Both Kenneth and the UPS guy thought Woody was cooking up a tasty stew for them when they arrived at our house only to find it was a pot of nasty porcelain-clouded sludge. Sounds like my days at the dining hall in college...

Woody and Brad finished tiling all the ways to the dining room:


And I put up a swath of our kitchen/ dining room color so the walls are ready for our cabinets to be set. Woody also primed our kitchen cabinets with a paint sprayer that irritated Maddy even more than the vaccum. Today the cabinets get a coat of slick white paint!

Being that it was too chilly to tan outdoors, I filed my nails, did some spot exfoliation and to alleviate the monotony of my spa routine stripped lots and lots of trim. My strip joint has moved upstairs to a plastic-coated setup reminiscent of "Dexter." Thankfully I don't engage in that fine television character's homicidal tendencies or penchant for pastel shirts...

One step closer to saving our quarters for the rides outside Kmart...

Woody primed the laundry room during the week and I applied color today! A soothing and watery light blue:

Once the room is tiled, we are set to put in the washer and dryer! Oh I can't wait to jimmy myself into the airplane ride outside Kmart and use all my quarters for a celebratory flight...

One thinset floor and one thickset beagle

Madison was peeved when we told her not to lick the mortar being used to set our tiles. We tried reminding her of the scene in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie licks the pole and gets his tongue stuck...but strangely she didn't seem to recall this. Then again, she also doesn't recall what "Don't lick your butt" means. Go figure.

On this the coldest day in recent memory (16 degrees this morning!), Woody braved the elements and used the wetsaw to start tiling our kitchen. Clever guy that he is, he heated the water he put in it so it was more like a steam facial. (He seems to be disagreeing with this metaphor. But that also may just be him shivering.) He got a ton done today!

Tomorrow will be more setting of tile and Monday will be grouting. Kenneth and crew dropped off the beautiful cabinets Kenneth crafted for us as well. These are some of the base cabinets:

And our impressive fridge surround and more base cabinets:

The only shot of Kenneth and Woody I got today is from their favorite angle for photos:

Woody's floor routine

As I was painting the far end of the hallway, I heard a number of grunts and outbursts of "He stuck the landing! He STUCK the landing!!!" Hoping Woody was not living out his East German judge fantasies again, I trudged over to investigate. Thankfully, I found him wearing this outfit and expression:
However, what really stood out was our kitchen floor:

Woody had ripped up the entire subflooring and revealed the original porch in prep for our tile floor! This was backbreaking work. While an army of 4'11'' musclewomen gymnasts could have made short work of it, Woody doesn't have that kind of upper body strength.

Prepping for our own Sistine Kitchen...

we spent all weekend. And we mean all weekend. With our necks craned at the heavens. Or at least the drywall 9 feet above. The ceilings -- as well as the walls! -- in the kitchen and hallway are primed! It makes the lighting look great and draws us one step closer to creating a fabulous mural that will no doubt inspire...

We got a mud mask!

Cuz's friend Raymond and his professional drywall crew started taping and mudding the drywall today! As you can see, it made the walls' pores look much smaller and their overall complexion much dewier.

View into kitchen from dining room

The upstairs is now starting to look like two brand new rooms -- one to use as an office and the other to use as a den (or, for those of you who like to delude yourselves into believing I will allow either an Xbox 360 or a foosball table into the house, a Man Cave. Or I guess it would more technically be a Man Garret, but I digress from my strict rule-setting...).

The Man Garret

The office

The two guest bedrooms with their shared bathroom are also looking more polished or, rather, more mudded.
As you're looking at these pics, you may notice that all of our earthly belongings have been Saran Wrapped. This was not an attempt to be artistic (like that guy who wraps buildings and bridges) but a (perhaps futile) attempt to protect our nooks and crannies from the drywall dust that will be kicked up when they begin sanding on Friday. We have enough drywall dust in our nooks and crannies. All of them. We don't need any more drywall dust in those places.