I have power again and am happily working at home today. Before we get MORE snow on Tuesday, here are a few more pictures from the weekend blizzard, including my lost trees.
The obligatory tape measure picture - 31 inches
Pi and K trying to peer over the snow
The front yard
Pi and , dwarfed by the drifts
My mighty cedars, might weighed down by the snow
The bent trunk of one that hopefully will survive
Pi and K resting at the Hilton down the road when we were without power on Saturday night
My little house has survived pretty well so far. The power has been out for about 8 hours and will likely be out at least through tomorrow. That means it is cold and dark…but not down the street at the Hilton where the girls and I are camped out! Here it is well-lit and toasty warm.
The yard didn’t survive quite as well. My side yard is lined with very tall cedars. They bowed under the weight of the nearly 3 feet of snow. One is lost - it fell over and broke off at the roots. I knocked snow off as many as I could this morning to save them, wading around in snow up to my hips.
Overall, I feel fortunate. A friend lost 10 large trees. Two broke through the walls of his house and more are resting on the roof. That is a great fear of mine. He has a good attitude about it, which I admire, but in the face of that kind of problem I can’t feel too bad for myself. $99 and a pet deposit solved our problems for the night.
We don’t get a lot of snow in DC, but we’ve had two “storms” in the past week. We got about 8″ over the weekend and it’s snowing again now. Fortunately, tonight’s snow is good snowman snow.
After walking the dogs at about 10pm, we stayed outside and made a snowman and two snowdogs. They helped: the noses are old stale peanut butter cups from 2 Halloweens ago, and Pi helped by eating one off the snowdog.
While building these, someone called the cops on me. He drove up very slow to my address, shone his light on me, and, upon seeing I was not suspicous, he turned around and left with a wave. He was quite amused that the suspicious person was either a girl making a snowman or the snowman itself.
I have now owned my house for two years. I have not given it as much attention as I did in the first year, but it has received some major upgrades this last year. I replaced all the windows on the second floor and put on new siding. I expanded the garden and have started harvesting a lot from the whole property. Decorating is coming along pretty well, too.
This year should bring a bathroom renovation and, depending on how things go, maybe a new driveway / walkway / front porch. Maybe, just maybe, it will also see an end to the kitchen renovation and an end to Cabinet Guy in my life.
When Cabinet Guy was here last time, he lost a piece of cabinet trim. I had three pieces all in the “someday the kitchen will be finished” drawer. When he left, there were only two. He, of course, said he had no idea about the trim.
As I was insulating the dishwasher, I found this missing piece shoved in the back of my cookie sheet cabinet. I’m sure they moved it and just tossed it in somewhere.
With this piece found, I was able to finish putting up the trim that has gone undone since May 2008. It makes a surprisingly big difference. Now the only two things left to do are to fix the end panels that Cabinet Guy messed up (Contractor Sal will do this during his next visit) and to get the right freaking doors. I’m still trying to make Cabinet Guy understand me on that one.
My kitchen doesn’t have a heat vent. There are no walls where one could go but, more importantly, there are no ducts that run near the kitchen. The only way to solve this would be to rip part of the finished basement, run more ducts, and then probably take out a couple cabinets.
I do not need it. The room is pretty much fine, though it gets a bit chillier in the cold part of the winter. Earlier this month, I noticed that it was especially chilly by the dishwasher. I probably missed this before because the dishwasher is near the door and I don’t often stand there unless I’m letting the girls out and the door is open.
There’s not really a draft, but it’s a LOT colder under there. It makes sense since the dishwasher backs to an outisde wall and there isn’t much of anything under the dishwasher between the outside wall and the main kitchen area.
I decided to insulate this. I went to my local True Value. They were very hesitant to give me any insulation. I don’t know why but I had to finally tell them to take me to where their limited selection was so I could decide for myself. I ended up buying an insulating water heater blanket, cutting it up, and stuffing it in to a few gaps on the sides and into all kinds of spaces underneath.
It seems to have worked pretty well. I don’t feel the cold over there like I was. Better yet, I beat the dorks at True Value who thought my idea was a bad one.
Cabinet Guy responded today. Here’s what he said:
there is a strip that goes on one of the doors to hide the gap. Those are the correct doors for that cabinets. I said if you find it necessary to get new Qdoors[sic] that I will do my best to work with the manufacture to make custom doors if all possible. Sal was going to install a strip between the doors that would have resolved this problem.
The thing is, he told me to put this strip in before and I said “No, get me some damned doors without a gap between them.” Contractor Sal took measurements for this and those are the measurements he gave to Cabinet Guy last spring. I informed Cabinet Guy of this, but it looks like we’re back where we were in January 2009.
Contractor Sal won’t be able to save me, either. He broke his foot and is out for 2 months. Perhaps we should take bets on whether or not I’ll have the doors by August.
My friend Dana passed me a link to ModWalls recently. I was looking through the tile pictures and saw this called “new leaf”. I really love it and it’s made me reconsider doing the bathroom in green instead of blue.
I figured it was time for a Cabinet Guy update. There isn’t much to update since the guy has not made a peep in a long time. Today, I decided it’s time to resolve this once and for all. I sent the message below to him and to Contractor Sal. Monday’s project: find a lawyer.
Dear Cabinet Guy,
Last spring Contractor Sal gave you measurements for the doors that I am still missing in my kitchen. If you’ve forgotten, there is a set of doors on the cabinet that was ordered/shipped incorrectly that have a big gap between them. You promised to order the correct doors along with trim because some was missing and the touch up paint (which you claimed to have in your possession over a year ago). I have yet to receive any of this or hear about it.
It’s been 20 months - nearly TWO YEARS - since I started this kitchen project, and I cannot fully express the magnitude of my anger that it is not finished yet. Please let me know this week when the new doors will be in along with the trim and paint. If I do not hear from you, I am going to start pursuing other means to force you to take care of this problem. It has dragged on far too long.
After chatting with MOM, I’m more convinced about the tile. I think I’ll do the blue tiles on the wall…
And then do a white tile on the floor like this:
I like the shiny white floor and I think it would go very well with the glass tile on the wall. I had thought about glass on the floor but I think it would be too much. This picture really convinced me. It’s an interesting bath, but I don’t really like the colored floor and with the blue walls I think it would be overwhelming.
So that’s the plan for now. Blue walls, shiny white floor. Then we’ll have white sink/toilet/bath, white walls above the tile, and white cabinets. I’ll still be looking for other tiles just in case I find something that I might like better.
