Progress

Yesterday the cabinets went in! There are a few problems with them, and a field supervisor should be out sometime to check it out. The paint is damaged on one of the upper cabinets. One of the other ones has some damage from nails not going in straight when attaching the backs during manufacturing. Also, for the big set of three drawers looking head on, the installer only put one handle on each drawer instead of two. It looks fine, but I am not sure if when they are full, if there will be too much stress with only one handle.


And the floors are mostly in! Matt ran out of glue yesterday, but more is on the way. Hopefully it will get here in enough time to finish today. His brother is coming over this afternoon to make a template for the countertop. Not sure if that will have to wait now because of the cabinet problems. I hope not. Time will tell.

We were hoping to be able to paint this weekend, but not sure if that is going to happen. Matt needs to repair a lot of walls first. I am a little bummed because I want to get it over with. Steve is not so secretly thrilled to not have to do something this weekend. We still have plenty of cleaning to do, and we can start putting some of our things back in the kitchen in the mean time.

Week One

We are little over a week through the kitchen renovation. Let’s review, shall we?

First there was demo.

Then plumbing.

And more plumbing.

And more plumbing.

Then patching.

And paint samples (we are thinking the one in the upper right).

And floors! Aren’t the awesome? So, so awesome. Awesome, right? Yes.

We are sick of eating out, but this week a ton of progress is being made. The end is near! Well, at least the halfway point it near.

We can’t say enough good things about AriCo Plumbing. Very conscientious and professional. Same thing goes for Matt, our friend/neighbor/contractor. So glad he started his own business this year.

Here. We. Go.

Floors came last week. Kitchen starts one week from today. This will both suck and be awesome at the same time.

Seattle!

So my little seester Schmadie is turning 30 in a little over a week. As part of her present, my mom took us on a girls weekend to Seattle. We live in different parts of the country (Champaign, Columbus/Dallas, Tucson), and Seattle was almost equidistant for all of us to get to. Weird, I know, but true. We had a fantabulous time.

Saturday we went shopping in downtown and went to Pike’s Place to check it out and eat $60 breakfast. Glad we went early, because the place was a madhouse later in the day. Awesome flowers and produce. Lots of crap interspersed because it is near the cruise ship docks. If I lived in Seattle I would go when they opened to get what I needed if I were in the area, but would be super annoyed the rest of the time. Too many tourists. I felt sort of bad contributing to that. In the afternoon as the others were catching up on beauty sleep, I walked around a little more downtown. Got some stuff for me and Steve at Columbia. The Fluvog store was having a sale. I ALMOST bought a pair of shoes for $39, but realized that I was going to buy them because they were $39, not because they were particularly awesome. The ones that were particularly awesome were $250. Eh.

Flowers around town were kick-ass. After living in Tucson, I forget that things grow.


Sunday we went to Bainbridge Island. I had fun taking funny pictures of Katie’s windswept coif and general silliness. I think that people were getting annoyed because I kept saying “ahoy! I’m sailing!”



This picture cracks my shit up.

On the island we went to a great yarn store, Churchmouse Yarn and Tea. We also went to Blackbird Bakery, where Katie got gluten-free herbed rolls and became very excited because they were awesome and tasted like bread. She is now creating an altar with brochures from the island and our ferry tickets and including a tip jar for people to fund her move to live there permanently. I thought the best part of the island were the public medians and sidewalk flowerpots that incorporated squash for the foliage. So smart, and tasty!

Sunday night we went to a restaurant called the Pink Door. It is owned by former circus performers. When we walked in, there was a bleach-blond, dread-locked, bespectacled, fishnet wearing woman hanging over a table of diners by a piece of fabric doing some sort of Circque de Soleil thing. I am not sure if it was good or bad that we had reservations to sit outside. Fun from a distance, but probably slightly intersects my feelings about people eating at strip clubs.

Anyway, all in all a great weekend.

It’s still grand, even the second time around

Weekend before last, my dad came to visit. It is summer in Tucson. If it isn’t covered it burns, if it is covered it sweats. We decided that it would be good to take a trip to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. Dad has never been, and we always get into these habits of living somewhere and then moving before we get to experience it all or share all of the cool shit with other people. We are planning on being here another 5 to 7 years but felt it was now or never to go up there with him.

We went to Sunset Crater until it just looked like lava, went to the Grand Canyon until it just looked like a big hole in the ground, went to the Lava Tube until it wasn’t refreshing anymore, and drank “train shots” at Altitudes until the asshole and his wife (who was sweet) sitting next to us got too annoying (at least to me and Steve) and we had to leave. All in all a good trip.

What we’ve been up to

As usual, I am slacking on the posting. But not for lack of activity. I’ve been crafting for people having babies.



We’ve been camping.


And biggest of all, we’ve been (planning) remodeling. Burst galvanized pipe under the kitchen cabinets last month. The whole kitchen needs to be replaced. Cabinets, counter, backsplash, flooring in the kitchen and living room. Here is what we had to live with for three days to dry the place out.

Now we wait. It will be 6 to 8 weeks before the materials all come in. You didn’t think we were going to make this easy, did you?

Making Some Stuff

Three months, huh? I’m really on top of things.

I don’t want to get into a long list of what we did, or where we went, or any other crap like that because really, who cares. People want pictures, not spouting off about senseless crap. Well my friends, I can hardly deliver on the picture front either. You would think that my sorry ass would have some super awesome pictures from my super awesome new Nikon cool pix camera that my mom got us for Christmas. That would make sense. Did I take a lot of pictures? Yes. Do I have the motivation to download them to the computer? No. This may have to do with the fact that Steve just HAD to have a Mac Mini, and this is where all the pictures are kept, but it is constantly not hooked up because he uses his work laptop all the time, so it is a pain in the patootie to hook everything up, and his response is that if we had iPhones I could take pictures and upload them to Blogger. Problem solved. He forgets to mention the part about the remaining 10 months on our Verizon contract, that I don’t want to spend $400 on phones, and that AT&T sucks.

Good thing I have my trusty regular phone to take pictures with. So here are a couple of things to share. People are still popping out the kids. I made this owl vest for Seth at work. His wife had a baby boy last week. The vest was for a 1 yr old, but I tried to size it down to a newborn. Not sure how big they are so not sure if this will fit. It is cute though…..even if it fits for about 3 minutes.

The next creation is carrots! I did not knit these. I can not believe that after just throwing some seeds in haphazardly, we actually have carrots. You are supposed to put them in rows and thin them and stuff, but I am considering the first time we plant anything the experimental phase (I don’t want to read up on how to plant or care for said plant). Yes, the experts are right. They should be in rows and thinned to get a greater yield. Go figure. But we still got about 12 carrots this year, plus the runts that Rey gets to eat. In your face Master Gardeners! I roasted these last night but we are not going to eat them until today. All those carrots cooked down to almost nothing. Hopefully they taste good.