Deja Vu All Over Again

As Bob and I struggled to lift tons of kitchen cabinets off of our pickup truck and onto the frozen tundra that is our current New England state of affairs, it occurred to us that we had done this before. Like seven years ago when we moved in: history does repeat itself.*

This is how we came to this particular episode in our lives. We have been bemoaning the state of our kitchen, especially the sink area. The particle board around the sink is soaked and exploding, the plastic sink is stained and nasty beyond description. Here, you see for yourself.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH! Awful! And that's after a good cleaning. (Those stains just don't come out anymore and the faucet is all chipped and it's beyond redeemable!) So when friends- who thankfully live close by (in another modern house)- offered their old(er) cabinets because they're in the midst of a kitchen re-do, we said "yes".

Let's just mention that poor Bob had to make three trips to pick up all those cabinets and it got colder and darker as we offloaded. Then we had to maneuver them all into the house. By default, they all wound up in the living room as it was the only available "free space". It's a good thing we celebrated Xmas last week!

These cabinets are in much better shape than ours but it will be a bit of a Chinese puzzle trying to fit them into our kitchen and its configuration. But hey! We're always up for a challenge.
In all honesty, if the only area we redo is the sink (and maybe replace some of our obnoxious cabinet doors which fold out in this wonky and deadly way), I'll be happy.

This area. That stupid dishwasher is going as we haven't even used it once and we just store dishes in it. And under that sink... I'm not even posting a picture of that! It's been leaking through the back of the sink for a while and there's some sort of leak from the pipes underneath. So tackling this area will solve several dilemmas.
Bob did take all the cabinets and counters and drawers, not only as a favor to the friends (thanks Joanne and Eric!) for thinking of us, but because he wasn't sure what part went with which piece.

These are the ones we're pretty sure we can't use: triangular corner cabinets and odd floating islands. But this is a small price to pay for things we were considering purchasing from Ikea or Home Depot. It may take a while, but I can't wait for our new kitchen! Oh, and warmer weather...

*No kidding! I just realized that January 3rd IS the anniversary of our closing! And it is going on our seventh year here; time does fly and history does repeat itself.

Studio Progress, Early Spring Style

Oh boy! I couldn't be happier! Bob, with a tiny bit of lifting help from Sheldon and yours truly, got my actual, official studio windows in place this last week. Doesn't that look great? All it takes is a few days of cooperative weather and above freezing temperatures, and the universe smiles down on us and windows are installed. No more plastic for me! (I took the liberty of tweaking out a few stray dead branches that were obstructing the beauty of the above photo. Don't you just love Photoshop?)
Here's an interior shot:

The windows are hinged on the tops and will push out from the bottom. Bob is investigating appropriate hardware. This resumption of the studio project has made me ecstatic. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (no, I am not departing this mortal coil!) and the reality that soon I will take up occupancy. Hooray!
Sheldon and Louise are still with us and I can't say it enough: they're the best house guests. We have put them through all kinds of tests and adventures (Like last night we had a tremendous downpour. Sheldon reported to us this morning that he had a drip on his face... ooops! We seem to have a bit of a ceiling leak; that would happen above a guest's bed. Yuck yuck yuck.) But other than that, we're encouraging them to use a bit of their East Coast time to look for real estate. Remember how much fun we had last week?

Not Untouched by Irene



As you can see from the placement of the several buckets, we did not escape entirely unscathed from the wetness that was Irene. We are supposing that the extreme southern dierction of all that woolly wind made the sliding door in my studio a leak factory. I'm glad that it happened in an "unimproved" area of the house; we haven't finished the framework around the outside of this doorway. That's on the list with the chimney as they are right next to each other. The floor here is already stained so no real harm was done. Can't wait to fix it, though!