We took off from Sunday 12/23 through Thursday 12/27 to visit Eric's family in sunny Ft. Lauderdale. It was a warm and welcome respite from the pace we'd kept in the weeks before Xmas. We intended to finish the tile job when we returned on Thursday night so the cabinets could be installed Sunday, but we decided that was just a little too ambitious and, after all, it is the holidaze so maybe we should cut ourselves a break. With that in mind we re-scheduled the installers for 1/8/08 and gave ourselves a little breathing room. Nonetheless, we still want to complete the job so it has plenty of time to cure before they start hauling cabinets over it and we start banging around on it. So last night we went to the house and spent a couple hours finishing cutting and mortaring in the edge pieces. Here's me setting tiles:
Today we went by and did a little cleaning of residual thinset so we can grout tomorrow.
The remainder of today was taken up by a few fun tasks (because shopping is almost always fun). We started at Lowes and ordered our GE stove and microwave and killed the $1500 in gift certificates that we'd received as a rebate for our cabinet purchase. Then we headed out to the west side to L&E Stone Kitchen Supply to check out granite colors for our countertops. They furnished our "old" kitchen's cabinets and granite countertops for an amazingly reasonable price and we've been very happy with them. They didn't have a style of cabinets we liked for the new kitchen, hence, we ordered KraftMaid from Lowes. Alas, when we got there today we learned that they've set up a back showroom and have 3 NEW cabinet styles available, one very similar to the ones we got. Darn. That woulda saved us some major cash, but we're (at this point) not unhappy with our choice, and as Eric pointed out, they don't have some of the great features our KraftMaids have. We were delighted that John from L&E recognized us (it's been well over a year) and quickly worked up a great quote for 3 different granite colors. He said we gave him scratch off lottery tickets after our last purchase and he won 5 bucks, which he thought was pretty cool. We took granite samples home and decided upon "Blue Pearl" as it's a little lighter (but still dark) and will nicely complement the blue in the Mexican tiles for the backsplash. Eric is psyched that the quotes came in at about half of our budgeted amount for the countertops! Since they did such a great job in the past, we gave them a deposit and booked appointments for measuring once the cabinets are in and installation a week later. So by 1/22 we should have fabulous new granite countertops in the kitchen! On another note, Justen has completed the decorative portion of the back porch and hauled away the majority of debris, so our backyard no longer looks like the local dumping ground:
He's still got to do some serious finish work on the concrete steps as they are pretty rough, but that will likely have to wait until warmer weather. Hopefully that means we'll start to see interior trim pretty soon!
Today we went by and did a little cleaning of residual thinset so we can grout tomorrow.
The remainder of today was taken up by a few fun tasks (because shopping is almost always fun). We started at Lowes and ordered our GE stove and microwave and killed the $1500 in gift certificates that we'd received as a rebate for our cabinet purchase. Then we headed out to the west side to L&E Stone Kitchen Supply to check out granite colors for our countertops. They furnished our "old" kitchen's cabinets and granite countertops for an amazingly reasonable price and we've been very happy with them. They didn't have a style of cabinets we liked for the new kitchen, hence, we ordered KraftMaid from Lowes. Alas, when we got there today we learned that they've set up a back showroom and have 3 NEW cabinet styles available, one very similar to the ones we got. Darn. That woulda saved us some major cash, but we're (at this point) not unhappy with our choice, and as Eric pointed out, they don't have some of the great features our KraftMaids have. We were delighted that John from L&E recognized us (it's been well over a year) and quickly worked up a great quote for 3 different granite colors. He said we gave him scratch off lottery tickets after our last purchase and he won 5 bucks, which he thought was pretty cool. We took granite samples home and decided upon "Blue Pearl" as it's a little lighter (but still dark) and will nicely complement the blue in the Mexican tiles for the backsplash. Eric is psyched that the quotes came in at about half of our budgeted amount for the countertops! Since they did such a great job in the past, we gave them a deposit and booked appointments for measuring once the cabinets are in and installation a week later. So by 1/22 we should have fabulous new granite countertops in the kitchen! On another note, Justen has completed the decorative portion of the back porch and hauled away the majority of debris, so our backyard no longer looks like the local dumping ground: 
He's still got to do some serious finish work on the concrete steps as they are pretty rough, but that will likely have to wait until warmer weather. Hopefully that means we'll start to see interior trim pretty soon!
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