the remaking of a kitchen

hee and haw and thank goodness, i think that the entire electrical thing is finished. we are hoping to have a visit from the inspector today, but even if that doesn't happen, we feel better all ready. at least i do.
now we can get the project inspection done and get on with the rest of the deal. i can hardly wait.

stretching tautly across the deck and yard are our new power wires into the house. nice job!

the supervisor on the concrete thing is watching that things are done correctly. i guess they are. this time both of the utility company guys are on the roof....neither had to go up on the pole. however when they came down, the main guy said, uh.....wouldja carry the ladder to the truck. see......one guy is always the one telling the other what to do.

our electrician is grounding the power to the house.

you can see the new wires hanging low over the deck. the other guy is on the roof in preparation for connecting to the mast.

you see the new wires coming out the top of the mast....we are making progress!

they are using heat to bend the pvc to carry the new wires into the house.

to the right of the satellite dish stands the mast minus wires. the electrician is working on the new meter box on the deck.....it's the same mast, but stands taller as they had to raise it to fit in the new meter box which is larger.

here's the other guy picking up the wire and coiling it before storing it in the garden. on top of one of my plants, but by the time i realized it the two guys were long gone and i wasn't interested in picking up the live wires to save my plant. sensible, huh?
i called the neighbors with little kids and cats and warned them about the wires and suggested they should avoid our yard today.

while he was up on the pole, he was cutting off power at that point, and literally c-u-t-ting the wires and dropping them to the ground. he also reattached new wires at the pole and then came back down and up to the house.

this guy has been the lucky one to climb the pole behind our shed in the backyard. he was particularly pleased with this duty, but i suspect he didn't have much choice. there always seems to be a guy in charge and the other guy on these teams.

this guy has been the lucky one to climb the pole behind our shed in the backyard. he was particularly pleased with this duty, but i suspect he didn't have much choice. there always seems to be a guy in charge and the other guy on these teams.

when i saw everything lined up in readiness on our picnic table i just had to laugh to myself. it reminded me of the back table before surgery...every little thing all lined up precisely so as to be ready when the surgeon called for it.
different stuff, but same deal if you ask me.

the electrician actually arrived before 8:30 which is pretty amazing. he is NOT a morning person, and has a long drive to our house, so i was surprised to see him. the utilities people got here at about 8:35 and were ready to go. this is the ladder to the roof, and just to its right you can see one of the u guys up there waiting for his buddy to do his part of the job.

today is a big day! the electrician arrived yesterday afternoon to make sure he had all the parts needed to make the service upgrade today. the utilities people arrive by 8:30 to turn off all power to the house and the electrician and his helper should be here then too. hopefully all goes smoothly and we are not powerless for too long. it is supposed to be another hot day, and we wimps need our a/c.

the snacks have new homes. :-)

did i mention that i HATE painting trim and that windows could even be worse! i got the dining room windows primed and the only good thing about it is that probably it may be easier to paint the next coat. i certainly hope so. i am feeling fairly grumpy about this, but surely that doesn't show???!

this may not be the final resting place of this particular tv, but for now it's great to have it there. this could be recognized as the former repository of the treats, but alas......times they are achangin'!

darryl was here today and the pantry door and drawerfront on the breakfront are perfect. he even drilled the hole and attached the knob to the drawer. unfortunately they didn't quite follow his directions on the cabinet door to the right of the sink. the finger pull was at the top of the door. i said that would just about guarantee that i would NEVER use that door! so, darryl comes back to us next friday afternoon, and they all will be fixed. he was very apologetic about the error, but hey.....they continue to make things right, so who can complain???? not me.

i took a springtime picture so decided i should include a mid-summer photo too. the position of the sun at this time of year keeps that garden in almost full shade all day long. perhaps i can get a better shot in august.

the thing i forgot to mention is that it rained today. real rain......the cool whip tub on the deck table has about an inch of water in the bottom. sweet. our poor plants, trees and grass were incredibly thirsty. i hope this is the beginning of a more reasonable weather pattern. we are most thankful. today was our watering day, so the sprinkler was on, and then it was pouring so i put on my raincoat and dutifully turned off our water. i'm still feeling responsible for conserving the water in the city wells. this is only ONE rain.

the electrician called today and says he will be here a week from today and 8:30 am, and the utilities guys will be here at the same time to disconnect power from the house. i'm asking everyone to think cool and dry thoughts as we will be powerless for at least 2 hours so the service can be switched over to the 200 amp box. hopefully all goes well, and the time estimate is correct and the utilities guys will return promptly! then i will be able to use both ovens, the microwave and several spots on the cooktop simultaneously without losing power. what a concept.
brian showed up today as a surprise visit. we now have the abs connected to abs and pvc to pvc, well i guess at one point abs has to connect to pvc. can i believe i am saying this nonsense? the answer is NO. i hope the inspector just loves it.
we went to the wood store yesterday on the way back from lunch in stillwater and chose the kind of oak......grade and width that we want, so now IF all goes well, we will talk to an installer and move a bit closer to the finish line. guess we need to start painting trim around the windows and doors and then the doors themselves. almost forgot all the baseboard. i plan to keep smiling.
darrell returns tomorrow afternoon with new doors and a drawerfront. yea!

today, darryl the magician from the cabinet factory visited us. he lived up to his reputation....for sure! he was able to fix some things i had deemed unfixable, and did a fine job on others. the replacement drawer front and the pantry door were not the right ones, but he will return next thursday with perfect doors and drawer front in hand, plus another cabinet door that was damaged. he also installed the new pullout in the pantry and moved one of the others so they all fit in the right positions. he put the right color of "skin" on the side of the cabinet above the cooktop so that looks beautiful now. darrel was with us for nearly 4 hours, and just worked away to make things right. this is an amazing service from the cabinet factory. i can't believe the excellent service after the sale. fantastic. dura supreme cabinets are the best!

well, about 10 minutes after i wrote the last post, the doorbell rang, and you guessed it. doug the state electrical inspector had arrived. about one minute after that the phone rang and it's the electrician who wants to talk to doug.
so.......they had decided to split the permit, with the kitchen being on one which doug signed off on today, and the other covering the service change......going up to a 200 amp box. so, hopefully that will be ok with the edina inspector when he visits the next time.
our electrician promised he will call on monday and get the service change completed before the end of the month. we hope.

the electrician called today and then stopped by as he said the inspector would be here after 10 am. well, it is now almost 4pm, and we have not seen the inspector. now what??

murlo came today and primed the ceilings in the kitchen and dining room......the new mud really soaked up the paint....used 1 1/2 gallons. the she painted the ceiling with the matte version of the color we will use on the woodwork.....that took 1 + gallons too. if you read carefully you may figure out that i visited the paint store 3 times this morning. what you don't see is that the first trip was before 8am.....not my usual schedule. murlo said she would be here by 8, and i just had a feeling it would be earlier, so i hopped out of bed and got dressed b/4 7:30; lo and behold....the doorbell at 7:30. some of us were not dressed by that time. :)

i forgot to post this picture of our breakfront with glass in the doors. it's hard to see in the photo, but the glass is called "water" and causes a mild distortion of the pieces on the shelves inside. we like it a lot!

my part of the painting is complete, the brushes and roller is cleaned....sigh. i really do NOT enjoy the clean-up. i think the walls look pretty good.....i always find a few places that need a touch up, but i have told myself that doesn't need to happen today. murlo comes in the morning, and i am looking forward to meeting her. she sounds like she has a great sense of humor and wants to just get at it and get the job finished. right on.....sounds ok by me.
while i was out for lunch today, darrell from the cabinet factory called, and he is coming on thursday. we have heard great tales about darrell's skill in fixing problems and getting things put right, so we look forward to meeting him too. i guess we really are making progress altho it doesn't seem that way sometimes.

today we returned to the business of painting as we have a woman coming next week to prime and then paint the kitchen and dining room ceilings. we have a couple of walls to paint, so i figured if we did them now we don't have to be quite so careful about getting paint on the ceiling. she will be covering it all anyway. not that i am going into sloppy mode, but i can lose that obsessive part and just paint away. i did about half of the priming this afternoon and then decided to quit until we remove an upper cabinet door so i can do that close detail work without adding paint to the door.

on the subject of gardens, i have been keeping an eye on diane's garden while she and her family are visiting the black hills. there are lots of raspberries growing on their formerly out of control hillside leading to the lake. she has done an amazing job getting things to grow there. some of them are from my gardens....those perennials that get excited and take over a bed. anyway, gary and brian and i are sharing the raspberries, and yesterday gary brought over a small bowl of them. i got some rhubarb from brian's garden and put the two fruits together into a raspberry rhubarb crisp. a really yummy treat.....and all the goodies from the neighbors' gardens! i did share the dessert with brian and gary.

for the past few days don and i have worked like navvies in the gardens. it has been hot, so we have been sweaty dirty messes at the end of the day. i dug up and re-planted some hostas given to me by mary alyce many many moons ago. she dug them up from her former garden when she was replacing them with a better variety. this one clump has served as the extras....i have borrowed from it many times to plant in a new area. this time i was planting around the large tree that borders and shades our hosta glade at its north end. while i was doing this, don was weeding and digging about in the same garden under the autumn blaze maple....it really needed some attention. i was pointing out the few things worth saving in the whole mess. i have not let a black-eyed susan bloom in years, and there must have been fifty plants in that garden....which will not be blooming this year either! :)
don and i......mostly don dug all the weeds and grass out of the former home of the stellas in front of the house, and we amended the soil with peat moss. it was so dry, and dead looking it was like gray-black dust. i dug up the moonbeam coreopsis i'd planted last fall in front of the arborvitae at the southwest corner of the house and split and planted it at the back of the bed. the reason i moved it is that it didn't get enough sun in its former spot. i then planted some pink petunias and volunteer moss roses and snapdragons to fill the rest. i use the term fill lightly. hopefully they will live and expand a bit. behind this bed i amended the soil a bit and planted some of the stellas there. it will look pretty if we can keep it alive long enough to fill in. brian has promised some seeds from some pink flowers in his garden that will reside behind the stellas. color at last!