John & Colette's Adventures

I found another pipe the previous cabinets were screwed into.

This was just a vent pipe so that’s better, but still you would think they’d be able to find the studs.

Above the stove it looks like a blind guy hung the old cabinets. There are drill holes about every 1″.

The electrician is coming this morning to move outlets, wire in the Tech Lighting Monorail light, wire in the outlets for the under cabinet lights and clean up some dumb wiring from the original builders (5 switches in the middle of a wall? Some of which control lights in other rooms? What were they thinking?).

We’re bummed because the under cabinet lights are on back order. They’re also redesigning them which sounds good but it means we won’t get them for a month or so. This means they won’t be hard wired in, but that should be ok. The transformers are small and will hide in the top cabinets.

No more cabinets

The kitchen remodel has begun!

The guys are here tearing out the old cabinets and soffet (yay!).

That soffet was built to withstand gale force winds! 2×6 construction and screwed/nailed into the studs. It wasn’t going anywhere. I just expected it to be 1×2′s framed under the ceiling drywall, but there’s no drywall above it. It’s anchored straight into the ceiling joists.

The cats are fenced in upstairs. We got a baby gate for the top of the stairs and this neat motion sensitive air spray that has worked out great at keeping them from digging up our carpeting at our door. I think the cats will need serious therapy after all this.

Before Picture:

Kitchen (Before)

An unexpected gift appeared in the mail today.

We’re so thrilled!

You’ll need QuickTime.

A fine Talk Like A Pirate day t’ye all!

Arrrrr.

I finally got my last bit of money from Australia this week! Yay. My obligatory contributions to the government retirement plan (aka: Superannuation) has finally been refunded to me, less the 30% Aussie Tax, thank you very much.

Now I have to convince my bank to cash a foreign check which will, no doubt, require more significant throwing of money around. Then I’ll have to declare it as income on our US tax forms which, fortunately, will give us a credit for the 30% Aus taxes.

Now the big question is do we put it into retirement or use it to help cover the kitchen remodel? Hmmmm.

I have never gotten wrapped up in a presidential election like this one. America has the opportunity to undo some of the damage done by 8 years of a corrupted Cheney/Bush regime and I’m quite nervous we’ll choose to follow the same course. This is a path of hatred, fascism and environmental irresponsibility.

McCain’s latest slogan of “Country First” has me particularly annoyed and scared. This is the same mentality that gives us “My country, right or wrong!”. People are throwing away the whole foundation of a democracy! When you can’t take responsibility and stand up and say my country made a mistake without fear of being labeled unpatriotic (or worse) then you’ve given your freedoms away. Not to mention that if I had to choose between my country and my family, I would choose my family first.

No exceptions.

Any country that demands undying devotion is one step away for dictatorship.

We went out and bought a vent hood & backsplash this weekend. The vent hood is from Vent-A-Hood and will probably suck the cats right out of the house. We also got a stainless steel backsplash with 2 racks. We still need to do something about a duct cover above the hood (oh, the things we’ve been learning), but vent-a-hood did not have a piece small enough for our room. We’ll figure something out.

We also got a microwave and dishwasher at the same place. The microwave will be sitting in its own little spot under the island. The dishwasher will be outside by the shed. Nah, just kidding. It’ll be where our current washer is. It’s supposed to be pretty quiet and has the nice stainless steel finish.

We haven’t gotten a fridge yet. We don’t need that right away so we’re holding off awhile. The kitchen designer at home depot gave us a good tip. It seems stainless steel is very hard to keep finger prints off and she recommends a finish called ‘cleansteel’. It looks like stainless, but is easier to clean and it also can hold magnets. So that’s what we’re going to look for when we get the fridge. Gotta have a place for our cat magnets.

Colette & I are committed. We have to remodel the kitchen now.

We starting thinking about it again a few weeks ago and were wandering around looking at appliances. Well, a store here was selling off their floor models, which included a Wolf range that Colette’s been dreaming of for awhile. It’s 36″ dual fuel (gas cooktop, electric convection oven) with a grill. We were thinking of getting one with a griddle instead, but for a $1600 savings we’ll take the grill and be happy.

It gets delivered next week and will sit in our garage for about 8 weeks until we get the kitchen redone.

We went to a kitchen store for a design but they seem to be pretty expensive. I think we’ll be going with Home Depot since we can get similar cabinets for much much less. Colette even gets a slide out spice rack (6″ wide cabinet with 3 shelves) and a drawer to store our trash & recycling bins! Yay.

Check out the product page.

Well, I got my iPhone! I ended up with the 16gb White since it was available quicker than the black.

It’s very nice. I could spend hours getting nothing else done. I’m sure the novelty will wear off but for now it’s freakin’ cool.

Oh, and it looks like it won’t be as expensive as I thought. About $10 more per month (hopefully) – you never know with these cell phone plans until the bills start rolling in.