Everyday Stupidities

   Funny how I check my blog every day or two for new responses but it didn't occur to me that it's been a couple weeks since I added anything. But I was waiting for Jamie's return :-D and as a semi-valid excuse I have been working on my kitchen and watching the Olympics so have been busy doing things that are worth talking about or taking pictures of. (It's semi-valid because it doesn't account for the other 18-20 hours of the day, heh heh.) How y'all doin'?
   The kitchen project has gone into full swing. Our target is to have this done by Labor Day -- yes, Illiterate, I will be in Packwood on Saturday; see you & yours on the back porch? -- and I suppose the word "done" means the painting of the cabinets and the completion of the countertops, acquisition of the stove and microwave (and potentially their installation), the installation of the new sink, and possibly the cleaning and painting of the walls but that's pushin' it. Somehow this doesn't include the reinstallation of the cabinet doors, the installation of new lights, the floor still hasn't been decided on, and the baseboards around the room and cabinets can't be done until a new floor is in. At left [click for larger image] is the newly-widened peninsula breakfast-bar countertop as it existed while writing this: after adding the trim strips but before the grout has been laid.
   This project is fun and exciting because I've always lived in houses where the only thing that ever changed designwise was what was hanging on the walls. The kitchen of my parents' house looked essentially the same when we moved in in 1976 and when they moved out in 2002; the only thing that ever changed was putting carpet over vinyl tile squares, and that was probably more about my mother wanting warm feet than about the tile pattern being fairly blah (and as I recall it, yellowish-beige). Even less changed in the bathrooms, including the parts that genuinely needed replacement because they were broken. And the walls? The only rooms that ever got new paint were the kids' bedrooms, neutral blue for the two rooms occupied by boys and neutral pink for my sister. The bathrooms were white. The kitchen was mostly wood panel so I won't complain about the lack of paint (paint on wood panel is tacky!) but the wall over the drainboard and all the walls in the diningroom that weren't brownish wood... white. As were the livingroom and the hallways and the master bedroom. Those HGTV personalities that carry their own paint sample card batches would have gone ga-ga for such a blank canvas, while others would have commanded, "Let's get this room out of the 1970's!!" seconds before going ape with a crowbar and an 8 pound sledge. That's where my wife and I come from, and while we're not into radical like some people (we have a friend with a stippled maroon livingroom and hallway, which looks great in strong natural light but like a dark cave down the hall where the only light is an incandescent bulb in a sickly off-nicotine fixture) we want color. It's subtle but present in the livingroom and hall, mostly light grey with two medium grey walls and in low light the two appear the same color, and the bathroom is a tasteful light green, but our kitchen will be purple and green and grey, dammit. Let there be color! But in the interest of full disclosure, you get one guess what color we painted the master bedroom a couple years ago. Uh huh. They can't all be revolutionary, we have to sleep in that room.