Stove Looking for Name

This stove is quite heavy. So is the matching 7' fridge. Luckily, my brother Mike had some flower-sellin' muscle come in to move these appliances like a "Brighten Your Day" bouquet. It was still pretty difficult. Matt did a fantastic job of measuring everything up - the stove and fridge fits with a fraction of an inch to spare.

The floors are done, the counters are in and the paint is...painted. All that is left for us to do it reattach some lighting (I hope it's as easy to do as it was to remove), hook up the dishwasher and stove to water and gas (respectively!) and move in. Well, that's not entirely true - we will have enough "trivial" projects to keep us busy for approximately 18 years.

We've moved most of our belongings, such as they are. Unpacking is kind of fun. We haven't seen a lot of this stuff for about 2 years. Unpacking is going to be like a vaguely familiar Christmas where we recognize most of the stuff but are still marginally surprised.

Counters Make Us Happy

That's right. Kitchen counters are the kind of thing that we look forward to. This really is, though, the centerpiece of this entire project. When our contractor, Matt, took us to the granite warehouse (those in the trade call it a stoneyard...and now I will, too!) in New Haven he told us that some of the pieces in there were better suited for hanging on a wall as a piece of art than as mere kitchen counters. Luckily, those particular types of exotic stone were easily ruled out due to...financial considerations. But we found a piece from Brazil that we thought suited us (and our "budget"), the same country that brought us bossa nova, Carnaval and Ronaldo. Although it sounds redundant, the piece we chose was very "rocky." Some of the pieces in the stoneyard looked like bamboo, others looked like a cross section of a riverbed. Pictures, sadly, don't do it justice, kind of like that photo album of your vacation that you show at work and your colleagues feign interest.

Gyula, our granite fabricator, did an amazing job of matching up 2 pieces near a corner so that they look like one, lining up a couple of veins and matching color perfectly. The length of our counter made it impossible to cut a single piece. It was close, but I guess Green Ocean slabs aren't as long as some. And because Erika and I are so environmentally conscious (oil-based primer and paint aside), we used the entire slab of granite! Of course, if we were really committed to being green we could have used concrete or glass or recycled spotted owls for our countertops...

Our island has its piece resting on top as we have yet to fix it to the floor. After the stove is installed in we will move the island (and amazing granite top) to its final resting place!

Cabinets in the Kitchen

Seems that we are finally taking some steps forward. In reality, all the work that we've done (and had done) could be filed under the heading "Forward Progress," but to our untrained eyes this is the most visible evidence that we're actually close to being finished with our little project. We're not total amateur homeowners...we did have homeowners' equivalent to a stint in the minor leagues when we had our c. 1850 duplex in Dover, New Hampshire. Now we have a house, though, that we actually want to live in for a while, without the added benefit of sharing a wall with a tenant (friends and family welcome anytime!).

Back to our tangible progress. When we first moved into the house the kitchen, as I've said, was workable. Sure, the countertops were installed during the Reagan administration (the first one), the workspace was dark and the appliances were purchased when the Mets last won a World Series (it's nice to be able to make that reference now that the Red Sox have won 2 World Series in 4 years). If push came to shove we could have used it. We decided not to, and picked out some cabinets and countertops that we felt would be a huge improvement. Before that, we tore everything out: walls, floors, ceiling, appliances, cabinets. It looked pretty grim.

Then...the moment we were all waiting for. Actual cabinets! Note the 60 inch space in the back for...it occurs to me that this stove is going to need a name!

The Neighbors Must Love Us

Fridge on the porch. Boarded up window. Mantle leaning up against the house. Industrial-sized dumpster parked in the driveway. We're not quite at Appalachia levels yet, but we're working on it!

Hard at work!

On the interior front, I think we turned the corner as far as our work (and our subcontractors') making things look worse rather than better. Most of the trim in the house has evolved from dark wood to shiny bright white. Rosin paper (and a thick layer of sheetrock dust) throughout the house is covering beautiful, mirror-finished red oak floors. The 1970's era paneling in the family room is now a nice white drywall. The downstairs ceilings - previously a great representation of 70's era style - are now nice and smooth, the swirly texture covered by approximately 900 pounds of joint compound!

Next on the agenda (or, Coming Soon!): cabinets in on Wednesday! After the cabinets are in, our granite fabricator will come in to make templates of the counters. We'll go to his shop in East Haven and decide which parts of the granite slab we've bought will become the island and other parts of the kitchen!