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the home stretch
Jan. 3rd, 2024 04:25 amvia https://ift.tt/DzQYZV5
Went over to the house yesterday morning and Jim was there sawing a hole in the exterior wall.
Not alarming at all once I remembered part of this remodel that i’m really excited about is that we’re getting an actual exhaust hood for over the stove. Not one of those ones that goes through a microwave either, a real exhaust hood that goes to the outdoors. (The real ones are mounted 30" above the stove top. Microwave ones have to be lower so you can reach the microwave. i can’t stand cooking in such a constrained space like that. No thank you. Keep my microwave separate!)
He had sawed out a big chunk of drywall on the interior too, and replaced it with plywood, which is much sturdier to screw mounting hardware into. At my request, he’d extended the plywood down a couple more inches (it’ll be covered by the tile backsplash so it won’t even show!) so I can screw a couple of heavy-duty mounting hooks in there and have a place I can hang both my cast-iron skillets when they’re not in use. I don’t like leaving them on the stove (my mother’s approach) or stacking them on a shelf (dude’s approach) because one is untidy and the other requires me to lift every piece of cast iron i own at once to access any of them. (I also have a square griddle and a Dutch oven and also a tiny skillet which Dude uses all the time when I’m not around and neither of us uses at all when I am around, because it is very much a Cooking For One mini skillet LOL.)
He paused to show me the deer hunting hut he’d meticulously constructed for himself while he was on Christmas break and then artistically had painted camoflage. (“My friends were like omg how long did that take you? I dunno, I wasn’t counting, I had a blast. Had a beer in one hand, spray paint can in the other, I just let it take as long as it took. It’s like arts and crafts! Who’s keeping track of the time?”) It did look great. As he was swiping his finger accidentally slid onto the later bits of the camera roll and it showed me the deer he’d gotten on the last day of hunting season. “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you look at that,” he said, and then looked at me and laughed, remembering I had told him I work in a slaughterhouse. “Right, you don’t mind that kind of thing, but still.” It was a nice big doe, cleanly felled, nothing to object to there.
I went and called the appliance company, who’d said they’d deliver my dishwasher and vent hood on new year’s eve probably. They seemed confused that I’d called, and then were confused when they discovered that indeed both my items were in stock and should have been delivered. I said I figured the holiday had confused things (genuinely, probably the vent hood had come in on NYE like the salesman had thought it might, but I bet somebody had the day off and they weren’t on the ball about calling people) so I just wanted to call and find out if anything needed sorting. They told me they’ll call me today to tell me the two-hour delivery window. So I’m getting my dishwasher today! Pumped. It’s gonna go into the living room to start with but like, y'know, that’s fine.
The counters are going in on Thursday. Hopefully, Jim said, the counter people could do it in the morning, because then he could start on the tile that afternoon.
Ah they’ve just called, my delivery window for the appliances is 11-1. OK cool.
The plumber can’t come until Monday. But then once he’s been there I’ll have my stove and sink and dishwasher. And, Jim says, that means the final, last little button-up details will be done on Tuesday.
“And then,” he said, amused, “I can go back to the regular schedule, because the people who refused to have their houses torn up over the holidays will be clamoring to get the work done now. It’s good you didn’t mind.” Which is precisely why we thought we’d gotten bumped up by two months, but it’s funny to hear him so directly confirm it.
“I’m the luckiest person in the world,” I said, “with my mother-in-law’s house vacant walking distance away for this whole time, so it’s been genuinely no trouble at all.” And I am. She’s coming back on Tuesday, so I figure we’ll move back into our house over the weekend, and I’ll deep-clean her house and (sighhh) put all the beautiful sewing equipment back where I found it. I won’t really miss her fancy modern sewing machine (which she just got and is third-hand and I don’t think she knows how to use either) but her old workhorse straight-stitch machine is a beautiful, unfussy beast I’ve really enjoyed spending time with.
OK i gotta get off my ass and go get the grocery shopping done so I can go sit in my house for the delivery window. I saved plenty of things to do, don’t worry. I’m starting to put stuff into the cupboards, made Dude come sit with me over the weekend and give his opinion– he’s been busy at work and has had no attention span but I refuse to take his “idk just put stuff wherever” at face value, he spends more time in this house than me and i will NOT have him after the fact annoyed with how I chose to organize things. So he did give opinions, finally. And I need a few more lazy susans and storage baskets and half-shelf-rack kinda thingies here and there but I’m getting there. (Your picture was not posted)
