Finger Bowl

Woody and I stick to the strictest etiquette here at 517 O'Neal. When we set the schooldesk/coffee table/computer stand/backgammon platform in our bedroom, we carefully fold the single-ply paper towels into shapes pleasing to the eye. We arrange the plastic forks to the right or the left. And we always move the soggy mail and greasy tool belt to the edge of the table. So when we chose a sink for the, ahem, cozy powder room we naturally went with a finger bowl. Sadly the Smithsonian had gone an snapped up this beaut:

So we settled on this one with a fancy (and space saving) faucet:


We have now decided to instruct all our friends with hands larger than a six-year-old child's not to visit.

It's kind of like we're hosting our own talk show

Like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Conan O'brien, we need someplace to put the many guests we have to the house. Someplace where we can ply them with cold cut platters and bowls of M&Ms before we call upon them to fix our sewer lines or move 6-foot-tall solid wood bookcases. With the books still in them. Here is our "green room":


Woody and I went through a number of colors for the upstairs office. Most of the conversations went like this:
Rachel: How about this muted wash of blue?
Woody: I like color. How about this paint chip here? Midnight Blue Blackout, that looks good.
Rachel: I feel like that color might consume my soul. Not to mention make the office dark.
Woody: I feel like Sparkling Spring might make me start going to Curves.
Rachel: How about green?
Woody: Yes, green is good.
Yes, green is good.

Demoing our kitchen for real

Back in October or so, I told my friend James that there were pictures up on the blog of us "demoing the kitchen." James seemed very impressed. "Wow, the renovation went so quickly," he said. I was mildly befuddled as I was living in a house without heat or a reliable roof and the renovations felt like they could not move fast enough. However, I chalked my confusion up to not understanding most of what happens in the learned halls of my academic department.

The next day after I checked my department mailbox for the 17th time in an hour, I ran into James. "When you said you were demoing your kitchen," he said, "I thought you meant you were showing us how your appliances worked." After I asked him what appliances were and if there were in any way related to things like the Axis and Allied powers, he added "I had no idea that you were actually demolishing your kitchen." Yes, back in the chilly old days, demoing involved going at walls with sledgehammers and using the ever wonderful Wunderbar. Now demoing involves these "appliances" of which James spoke! Witness the "demo arena"!


Yes! Glory be! We have a STOVE! Hooked up today, the stove was put to quick work on pasta sudonara.

Woody decided to push the appliance to its limits and boil roughly an oil drum's worth of water for a pound of pasta.

Maddy also greatly enjoyed our first indoor cooking venture as we were very messy and she didn't need to chafe her little beagle tongue lapping food off the concrete back porch.


One more view of our beautiful beautiful chocolate chip cookie generator:

Range on the Home

The tricky job of building the 45-degree-angle cabinet for the range hood and stove is done! Kenneth and crew put up the beautiful and majestic top for our stove on Friday. Soon the stove will be tucked underneath it, soon....

Institute of Higher Learning

Woody has the next couple of days "off" and is using them to get our upstairs office in shape -- he primed the entire room yesterday in addition to eating lots of peanut M&Ms and tormenting the dog. I really don't know how he fits it all in...

We'll be using this room for a bedroom for a bit while Kenneth and crew refinish our floors downstairs. That means that soon we have to do the Most Boring Thing on the Planet. It bests even delivering a lecture on liberalism in Argentina in stultifying tedium. We needddddddddd (apologies, I dozed off even thinking about it) to browse and buy wall-to-wall carpeting.

Another view of the room to fend off the images of myself petting swatch after swatch of beige boringness...

Soak this Madge!

"Madge! You use a dishwashing liquid to soften hands?" "Doesn't everybody?" To that I answer hell no everybody doesn't! Our days of handwashing dishes are over! I plan on putting everything from our Goodwill Easter Bunny mugs to our Wedgewood china in this baby:

When Maddy made the mistake of walking too close to it, Woody and I looked at each with cocked eyebrows and said in tandem "Hmmm, what do you think? We can remove the top rack to make plenty of room for dirty beagle...." And really, if there were some dishes with leftover blue cheese in the load with her she'd never notice she was going through the Pots and Pans cycle.

A closer look at its inaugural voyage...

Chop chop!

We have the makings of our butcher block island! Kenneth and crew sliced and diced Beth's butcher block countertops into a nice top for our prep island. They will sand them, glue them back together and refinish them. Sounds like the story of our life recently!


The cabinet doors came in as well! And while the top cabinet doors will be moved to the laundry room cabinets, the bottom ones are in for good. Rumor is next week a stove might be installed. In our house.

Where's Wald,er, Maddy?

Perhaps the only one who doesn't like the idea of laundry facilities in house is Maddy. Here you can see she has been pushed to one of the more, ahem, "transitional neighborhoods" of our mattress. There are cute restaurants over there now but still some burnt out buildings and working girls...

Fit and trim

Kenneth and crew have been busy doing the exacting work that is putting up trim. Since 517 dates from 1913, she has all kinds of nice details like 8"-high baseboards and interesting caps to the doors. They don't sell all kinds of nice details at Lowes or Home Depot so the crew has been planing, routing and sanding them from scratch. I am quite convinced now that they could craft a convincing mold of anything. After 11 p.m. I often wonder if they have replaced Woody with a convincing likeness made from MDF. But then I realize MDF doesn't (usually) snore like that.

Finally Fluff and Fold at Five Seventeen!

Behold our IN HOUSE laundry facilities!

I am nearly left speechless at the convenience of such amenities. When I wanted to wash our comforter earlier this evening, Woody had to stop me from:

1. Driving to the ATM
2. Cursing the $3.50 ATM fee
3. Driving to the gas station
4. Buying a Propel Berry water
5. Asking the life-hardened cashier for "Fives for that ten"
6. Driving to the launderette.

I had gotten to step 4 before Woody could awake me from the zombie-like trance I slip into when dealing with washers the size of oil drums and smokers folding their underwear.

Woody and Brad dislodged the two glorious laundering devices from their place behind the couch in our storage unit on Monday night, after which Woody engaged in some Extreme Washer/Dryer Vaulting:
Up...
Up...
And away!
I told Woody perhaps this was not such a fun game to play with the furnace. I hope he believes me.

"I like cold beverages"

Finally, a place to store G. Love and all our Special Sauces:

The fridge has just been plugged in and Woody and I are counting the seconds until the 24-hour "cooling off" period has passed. Woody and I never give each other that long to cool off. We normally just goad one another until one of us produces ice. And then the biting, clawing and hair-pulling feels worth it.

We are so excited not to have to drive to the "Ice" shack next to Mickey D's when we want a chilled cocktail. (We discovered long ago that bags of ice don't really keep in our current freezer.) We are also excited to have doors on the laundry room! This means we are close to laundry machines in the laundry room!

A closer view of our first two functioning kitchen appliances! Get an eyeload too of the newly trimmed windows. They look very fancy and finished. I never thought I would say those words in relation to our abode.

Because when you're living in one room you need a 47-inch TV...

we took advantage of a Woot! deal and ordered ourselves a set (for the living room eventually). Here you see Woody setting up the brand new telly. Since he is leaned over you can't see him drooling or quietly clapping with glee.

Maddy looked equally as thrilled to have some new AV equipment:

Woody easily got the fancy HD picture going:


This made Maddy positively giddy:

I can tell she is waiting to watch the Super Bowl with baited beagle breath.

Pizza pizza

You are witnessing the first instance of (prep) cooking in our new kitchen! We pressed out some pizza dough, plunked the pizza stone on the grill and the lightly spritzed the pies with our secret ingredient...

that's right, Formula 409. It's a serviceable substitute when you've run out of either truffles or mini marshmallows. It took forever for us to eat since Woody also insisted on making sure that each round was perfectly level. When he tried to swirl the olive oil on with his float for spreading grout I drew the line. Our delicious array of toppings, all chopped at normal counter height...amazing...


The only remaining piece of pizza after we horked it all down standing at the peninsula:

Woody said he would finish this piece and yet the next morning there it sat. He eats like a bird, I swear.