Aldoblog

When we took out the kitchen sink cabinets, and the walls behind them, we found what our plumber called a “masterpiece of modern art.” But really, it was a baroque mess.

So, at the end of the week, we’ve finished the electrical, including some in-wall speaker wire and coax, and one Cat-5 Ethernet line. Most of the walls and all of the ceiling are insulated. The ceiling is up. And something special is hidden inside it.

A quick update on the kitchen remodel. (Look, I wrote it without a qualifier! I must be coming to acceptance…)

This is the before-and-after, the reeeeally early version.

There is no doubt that I should have seen this coming. Should have been ready, mentally, financially, for this to get really complicated, really fast. But it really did seem simple to me, back when we first started.

I am writing, of course, of our apparent decision to rip the kitchen out to the studs.

On New Year’s Eve we had a daytime open house and “freecycle” party. I thought I’d post the invite here, since people told us it was pretty amusing…

You know that “oh shit” moment at the top of a roller coaster, when you’ve just finished the slow climb up, and haven’t really started the first drop. The point where you’d really like to take just a couple seconds to summon your courage, but it’s too late, out of your hands, and carrying you away whether you’re ready or not?

That’s what buying our new stove was like tonight.

On New Year’s Eve, Rochelle and I had a “Freecycle party,” where we put all the things we were getting rid of in our dining room, invited people over, gave them plenty of alcohol, and then told them they could take anything in the pile that they wanted.

It started innocently enough. Rochelle’s mother very generously offered to buy us a new stove, after we complained about our current oven during Thanksgiving. And, if we could have just done that, it would have been a great kitchen improvement that would have cost us almost nothing.

Our water heater tank has sprung a slow leak, and today the plumber said it would need to be replaced. We’re considering a tankless water heater, probably the Bosch AquaStar 250SX. Any suggestions?