Ramblings of a rural(ish) geek

The cabinet is finally done, other than the doors which will take about 5 minutes once I find the screws, and it's usable without them. J installed the countertop and attached the upper cabinet last Sunday, so I spent Monday figuring out where things would go in the cabinet. Saturday, I installed three more sliding baskets, which make the cabinet more useful. I lose some space to the runners, but the baskets go all the way to the back of the cabinet so I can stash stuff in the back of the shelves and still get to it. I figure it's a fair trade. There's still trim work to be installed (toe kicks, some base molding for the outside edge), but there's a lot of that to be done in the kitchen. (I need to remember to get some quarter-round for the island the next time I get to Menard's.)

I wrote an actual letter to the local lumberyard, and got a (somewhat badly written) email back, which essentially said 'yeah, we screwed up. This is why, but we can't blame you for going elsewhere in the future.' The writer did actually look at the orders and figured out where the mistakes occurred, so there's that.

We finally got the tree decorated on Sunday. It's been up since the day after Thanksgiving, but we've not had everyone in the house at the same time since then. The kids decided we should do a 'no flying ornaments' tree this year, so all the birds and such were left in the boxes. The only flying ornament on the tree this year is an old Happy Meal Max-as-Reindeer ornament. Even the glass swan that's been on every tree for the last 30 years was left off.

SR will be singing with the choir on Xmas Eve. DB will not -- he's working sound. The other college kids who said they'd sing with us are apparently not (G was at church on Sunday, but skipped rehearsal; N won't be back in town until tomorrow), and the other alto decided that she was going to sing after waffling for a couple of weeks, so SR isn't as critical to balance as she could have been, but we're still only at 3 S:2 A:4 TB (one of the Sops is a trained sop; two of the men are, to be polite, not good).

The flooring is expected in the warehouse sometime in the next couple of weeks. Then we can schedule an installation date. We have a certain amount of work to be done just before they come out -- I want to remove a badly placed floor vent, so we'll need to patch the floor there. (We'll also need to remove the ductwork in the basement, but that doesn't need to be done before the floor goes down.) I expect that we'll have to do some subfloor repair in front of the dishwasher (there've been a few leaks, just before and shortly after we put the new one in), and perhaps a bit where the old cat waterer was(which was not as fully contained as one might wish). We also need to check the floor in the hall where the cats sprayed for a while during the settling phase.

The kitchen walls are now painted -- I probably could have gotten away with buying just a quart of paint -- when I did the math, I neglected to account for the 60% of wall that is covered by cabinets. Ah well, there's a laundry room and a basement stair to paint.... The accent wall in the dining room matches the one in the living room -- I did get just a quart for that one, as it's only 6 feet long.

The laminate samples are beginning to show up -- I ordered larger samples from the manufacturers, after doing a first pass using the teeny samples from the lumberyard. Still waiting on the cabinetry/countertop quotes, but they did say "up to two weeks", as they're down to one designer for the summer, and their shops are busy too.

And then we all ran away for the weekend! Musecon was fun. I really need to remember to set alarms so I'd remember to go to things I wanted to, but.... Did watch the blacksmithing, and spent quite a bit of time watching the saris and lenghees and kurtas and salwar khameez at the Indian weddings. DB was a guest/volunteer at the Kaboom! on Saturday night -- fun with liquid nitrogen!