She's Crafty! C-C-C-C-Crafty!

Alligator puppet, made from an individual-sized cereal box and part of my huge tote of polar fleece. Googly eyes courtesy of my Great-Aunt Emma, whose craft supplies I plundered before selling them on eBay .

See, this is how I envisioned the craft corner in the kitchen working.

Okay, maybe I pictured a less pointy hat, but still, it's the right idea. What were we making?

Glitter glue prints. Yay.

Done

Before - the old owner's furniture and arrangement

After: New paint, new floorplan, new floor, new lights, new couch slipcover, new window treatments

So this room is done. At least I think so.

(and it's just the perspective that makes it look cramped)

Work Day 28/Calendar Day 40

'Nuff said.

Work Day 27/Calendar Day 39 - Stoned

Bye, bye, tetanus! Hello, slate!

Nope, no variation in color or texture at all in these rocks ...

I've been gettin' busy (hanging pictures) in the living room ...

... and mounting things under the sink.

See this? This is where my stove would be, if the electrician had bothered to show up yesterday. Or today. Not that I'm bitter or anything ... it's not as if he's the only thing separating me from a completely functional kitchen, and the pan of brownies that will christen it. Oh, wait - yes he is. Show up, dude, lest I tell everyone in the blogosphere which electrician NOT to call (and send even more evil thoughts your way).

Work Day 26/Calendar Day 38 - Cue the choir

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!

"Take my picture, Mommy!"

Told you it would look even better once the grout was in

Look, Jason! No dumpster!

(Port-a-potty is still hiding behind the corner of the garage, at least in this picture)

Work Day Twenty-wheeee!

I'd complain about the fumes from the PVC glue, but it means that I might - MIGHT - have a working sink tonight. Hoo-freakin-ray!

Work Day 25/Calendar Day 37 - Photo festival

Lesson for today:

No matter how many times you repeat to yourself "Do not try to flush the toilet when the water for the whole house is turned off," when you finish taking care of business you will immediately reach for the handle and attempt to flush the toilet. It cannot be avoided; just accept it and move on.

After much hurried late-night sketching and rearranging of little paper tiles on a sheet of graph paper, I managed to come up with this:

Don't say you hate it, because it's now cemented to my wall, and I think it looks pretty good. I liked the other design, but it looked a little "My, aren't we so hip and modern? We're in the 1980s now!" The short spans of counter actually worked out with the regular design, just tweaked a little, and the second inside corner only looks a little wonky. I'll just stick a crock full of spatulas in front if it if it bothers me.

The glass tiles are in place, too, as are all the little fiddly bits used to finish off all the edges of the backsplash around the window and doors. One of the tile guys spent an alarming amount of time stapling down some reinforcing screen so that our entryway tile won't shift or crack (you can only see the double layer he put down in one area - trust me, the whole thing is like a stationary tetanus depot).

He had a nifty staple gun - basically like a hammer, only when you slam it into the wood it drives in a staple. Not exactly a precision instrument, but it looked like a lot of fun ... for the first 10 minutes. You'd think all that banging would have phased the cats and freaked out the kid, but ... not so much. Here they are, literally less than 10 feet away from the banging:

Meanwhile the plumber arrived to move the hot water heater to a location that wasn't guaranteed to electrocute anyone attempting to reach the circuit breaker panel.

This house is a lot more "normal" than most of our previous ones (no knob-and-tube wiring, no rotten floor joists, no renovations by Larry, Darrel and Darryl), but I think the original plumber's attitude was basically, "Code Schmode. I wanna put the water heater here, so it's going here, even if it is 18" in front of the electrical panel." Here's the spot in question, centered between those two black vertical pipes:

The plumbers will be back tomorrow to hook up the sink, dishwasher, icemaker, garbage disposal, etc. And tomorrow is the perfect time to ask them why our bathwater is now on the dingy side when it never was before today.

And the tile guys are supposed to be adding grout to the backsplash and setting the tile in the entryway, while the electrician is finishing all the stuff he refused to do while the water heater was in its former location, like wiring in the new outlets and hooking up my stove.

It's gonna be a little busy around here tomorrow, huh?

Work Day 24/Calendar Day 34 - Granted

Today was apparently "think on your feet day" of the kitchen renovation, as the tile layout the designer emailed this morning had a significant number of the glass tiles occuring right over where there are outlets in the wall, so we were only going to end up with like seven glass tile insets. If it was up to me (and in my budget) I'd be covering every flat surface in the kitchen with these suckers, so seven wasn't going to cut it. And pretty much every other decision that had been made about the tile design ended up needing tweaking in order to work, so it's a good thing I wasn't absolutely wedded to the original plan.

I got called to the kitchen every 45 minutes or so to make a decision about how many glass tiles to inset in each location, where to end the field tiles around the window, how to finish off the tiles near the door, or to officially approve the design change we needed to make in order to start the tiling without the designer drawing up a whole new plan for us. This was more fun at the beginning, when I felt well, than it was around lunchtime, when I suddenly came down with vertigo and I felt like I had "a-fever-and-I'm-going-to-throw-up-soon." I'm sure the tile guys wondered why I was constantly carrying a plastic trashcan around with me, but I know when it's best to take precautions, and today was that day.

The positive side of all this on-the-spot decision making is that I got a chance to watch the tile guys work, which I was hoping for anyway, since applying tile is one of the few amateur home improvement projects I haven't tried yet. I got a kick out of the fact that the tile guys, while being very professional and obviously very good at what they do, cut some of the same corners I would feel guilty about cutting if I did the job myself. Need spacers you can adjust for size? Fold up cardboard strips you've ripped off of a cardboard box. Need to hold some tile in place temporarily? Electrical tape. I totally want to start working for them - I think I'd fit right in.

After a solid morning of work, most of the field tiles are in, and the glass tiles are being prepped over the weekend so they can be added on Monday. Here's where we are:

That one glass inset is just sitting there, it's not actually attached. This will all look much lighter once the under-cabinet lights are working - it photographs a little dark, too, so in real life you can actually tell that the insets are a 2"x2" grid of the teal glass tiles.

The counter on either side of the refrigerator is only 12" wide on one side and 15" wide on the other, and consequently the pattern we established on the main runs of backsplash would look a little dorky if we continued it over there. So we've been playing around with variations of the design (tiles as squares instead of on point, no glass insets, etc.) and complete departures from the design (just make a band a few inches tall so there's something there, but it's obvious we weren't trying to duplicate the pattern). The tile guy suggested this, which I like and Jason is sort of "ehhhh" about:

(note use of painter's tape? I love these guys!)

This weekend I'm going to be sitting down with the elevation for this wall and to see if I can come up with anything that both of us agree on. We've got almost 60 1" glass tiles left over to play with, and a whole box of the field tiles we can use, so the sky's the limit when it comes to designs.

And if it turns out that we have all of those glass tiles left over, I guess I can just sleep with them under my pillow at night or something. Sigh ...

Work Day 23/Calendar Day 32 - Wishful thinking

I wish the tile guy had showed up before 4pm.

I wish the designer had remembered to give me a copy of the layout for the backsplash, or at least brought one with her when she came to talk with the tile guy.

I wish this was on my wall, not just a mockup I staged on the counter.

Breathing deeply, looking at lovely glass tiles, muttering "Serenity now," making dinner reservations and digging out the bottle of bourbon ...

Work Day 22/Calendar Day 30 - la la la-la la la*

* Sung to the tune of the Smurf theme song##

Things got off to a rousing good start this morning when the counter guys showed up while I was still in my jammies and had bed head. I'm feeling pretty good that this has only happened once in the past month, which is like a minor miracle considering my world-renowned skills as a Non-Morning Person.

Then one guy lost his grip on the main counter piece on the way down our front walk, chipping off a piece the size of the last bone in your thumb. I was holding the door open for them when it happened and I didn't even flinch or say anything, which I later found out really impressed the counter guys. "Wow, you didn't freak out when it chipped! Usually if the homeowner sees something like that happen, they go ballistic on us." Um, actually I prefer to seethe under the surface and reserve judgement until the repair has been made. If the repair had looked bad, that sucker was going right back onto the truck and I'd have been handing them their balls in a grocery sack on their way out the door.

Luckily the piece chipped off of the bottom edge of the corner that sits in the inside corner of the room, and it repaired easily so you literally can't even see it was damaged. Ah, the wonders of modern science ... if that had been a fancy-schmancy granite countertop, we'd be stuck without countertops (or plumbing, tile, or electrical) for weeks until a replacement could be made.

Anyhoo, the rest of the installation went seamlessly (har har), and by 9:30 we had counters in the kitchen. Liza was able to enjoy her first meal at her specially-designed snack and craft location, which we've been hyping every time she gets titchy about people stealing our kitchen.

That chair is a family heirloom of sorts - for as long as I can remember, it sat in my maternal grandmother's kitchen, collecting newspapers to be burned in their outdoor fireplace and waiting for grandchildren to sit on it while chatting in the kitchen. My mother can remember sitting on it as a kid to shell peas. Out of all the furniture and stuff at my grandparent's house, this is probably the only thing I really, really wanted to inherit. So any of my cousins who are reading this and were hoping to get it for themselves, take it up with Pat or Gary - my mom swiped it, fair and square.

Notice that the counters have been in for less than 6 hours, and already they're accumulating junk?
This is my favorite detail of the sink, the way it sort of swoops along the back. Technically the back corners can be punched out to install sprayers or soap dispensers, but I'm leaving them whole because I love those little plateaus so much.

Tomorrow is a day of rest here, as the tile guy had to push us back on his schedule until Thursday. So unless I can think of anything interesting to say, I may take a little kitchen blogging break for 24 hours. See you Thursday!

## Can't remember how the theme song goes? Here's a video - shot in a juvenile correctional institution, apparently, to help jog your memory. It will be stuck in your head for days now ... bwahahahahaha! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQw1FwnF8sk

Work Day 21/Calendar Day 29 - details schmetails

Paul the Contractor spent what may have been his last day at my house, taking care of a few tiny details that nobody will notice unless they're not done. Such as finishing off the trim around the floor ...

... and building a new access door for the crawlspace to replace the one that used to be in the kitchen ceiling. Now it's in Liza's room, and it's firmly screwed shut (and insulated better than the rest of the wall).
Oh, and most excitingly, he brought some of his daughter's old dress-up clothes to donate to Liza, including three pairs of ruby-red Dorothy shoes in various sizes:

Had to pry them off the kid to go to the beach today. I think she's just excited that she's got a pair of "dress up" shoes that I let her wear outside. Thanks, Paul!

Tomorrow: Corian! I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight, I'm so excited!

Work Day 20/Calendar Day 28 - migration

February is a quiet time in Northeast Ohio, when most animals prefer to stay warm in their nests and hibernate. But household goods, driven by some inherent need to return to the place of their entry into the world, will stop at nothing to reach their goal. Not even Superbowl Sunday will stand in the way of books that want to be reshelved ...

... coffee mugs that yearn to break free of the confines of the dreaded "copy paper box of doom"...

... or a pitcher from Williams-Sonoma that is seeking its rightful display space after a decade of languishing at the bottom of a china cabinet.

Work Day 20/Calendar Day 26 - trimmed

Last night Jason and I put a coat of white on all the trim for the dining room and living room, in hopes that the contractor could attach it today so we can load the furniture back in this weekend. And the result:
More linear feet of trim to caulk, spackle, and repaint. It feels like that's all I've done for the past three years is paint freakin' trim. At least at this house we're using waterbased paint.

Oh, and Liza's been painting, too:
Yes, she did just write "LI" with no prompting or help from me. Why? Because she's brilliant, of course. We just won't discuss the fact that she stepped in the paint tray afterward, hmm-kay?

Work Day 19/Calendar Day 25 - bwahahahahahahaha

(Gretchen does the happy dance throughout the first floor of her house, a jar of peanut butter in each hand)

And the (wood part of the) floor is 99% finished, just one strip left by the back door and a few filler pieces to go under the dishwasher.

Oh, and MLF - it's taking so long because the contractor is doing a 200% better job at this than I ever would. Each piece has to be inspected for flaws (we've got at least a dozen reject planks), sorted to go into an appropriate place in the floor based on color and length, cut to size if necessary (and the saw is out in the 10-degree garage), glued down the length of the seam, set carefully in the glue that's been applied to the floor, tapped into place, nailed into place, then cleaned off with mineral spirits to get off any glue that seeped up.

And that's AFTER the floor has been prepared, which involves chiseling up anything that isn't perfectly level, countersinking any screws that are sticking up, adding extra screws to any part of the floor that squeaks, vaccuuming, and applying the glue. All in all, better him than me.

Work Day 18/Calendar Day 24 - Daaaaaaaaaamn, guys!

My boys were haulin' ass today. We might be able to stop tiptoeing around glue blobs by the end of this week!

Work Day 17/Calendar Day 23 - I can handle this

We're back to one guy installing the flooring, and he had to wait until lunchtime for the extra glue to arrive, so things are moving slowly on that front.
That's probably a good thing, because every time he finishes more of the floor, I have to be more and more careful not to track any of the miscellaneous glue splatters onto the new flooring:

On the positive side of things, the contractor spent this morning attaching the knobs and pulls to the kitchen cabinets, which means I can start to actually load stuff into the upper cabinets, because they're done. D-O-N-E. Done! Woohoo!

Jason didn't have to leave for the airport until later this morning, so he had a chance to check out the new hardware. He had never even seen it in a catalog or anything, so I think he was relieved that I didn't choose replicas of shrunken heads or anything (shucks, those were backordered - it would have given the place such a nice tropical feeling).

Going back to the whole Simple Abundance thing, one of the ways we're supposed to be finding our authentic self is to make a scrapbook of pictures of things we like, or of things that remind us of how we'd like to be living.

I've been keeping one since we lived in Japan 10 years ago, and I just looked through it to see how close my kitchen comes to the pictures I've pulled out over the years. Variations of those little cup pulls on the drawers show up in nine of my kitchen photos, along with drawers for the pots and pans, drawers for the trash and recycling, racks to hold the cookie trays upright, beadboard doors, white cabinets with colored countertops, and almost exactly the same shade of blue/green/grey that we picked for the walls. I haven't looked at this book in close to a year, and yet I managed to get all of that in my tiny kitchen remodel.

Guess I know what I like and stick with it, huh?

Now I can't wait to go back through the other pages and start ripping out things that no longer appeal to me. Then I get to go buy new magazines to rip up for inspiration - huzzah!