{State of the Kitchen} Part 3: Deliveries Galore

Several deliveries were made this week

Things are starting to look a little different! I've cleaned out almost all of the cabinets and the pantry, except for some things I can just throw in a bag at the last minute. I canceled my cleaning ladies for this month; there's no need to have them come when my whole house is a wreck.

The dining room is now a storage area

1 of the spare bedrooms is also being used for storage

My range was delivered on Monday; the hood was here on Tuesday.

Deliveries early in the week

The big delivery was made on Wednesday. Before the delivery, I had to clean out that area.

It looks pretty empty in this area

We weren't sure if everything was going to fit

Just to be on the safe side, I moved the kitchen table to this area

I was given a 4 hour window for the cabinet delivery, which was kind of a bummer, but par for the course. I lucked out with the range & cabinet deliveries: both were delivered in the earlier part of the window. All of the delivery men were extremely polite and efficient. Better than that, everything appears to be delivered in good condition. I say "appears" because the cabinets are still in the boxes; the contractor will have to look over them. With the cabinets, 1 of the guys told me what was in the box as I marked off the list he gave me, and then checked it against my invoice. I have a few things that weren't delivered; nothing big or major. I'm not sure if those things are already in the boxes or will be coming. 

We've hit a snag: When we first spoke with the designer at Home Depot, we were told that the demo would happen a couple of days before the cabinets are delivered. The cabinets were completed earlier than expected; as soon as I had the date I let the designer know. But then she was out sick, so it was almost a whole week before she was back at work. She is only at the store 3x/week and isn't on a fixed schedule. I went by on Sunday to make another payment and to pay for the tile & under-cabinet lights. As soon as I did that, she emailed the contractor. I didn't hear from him on Monday, so I called him on Tuesday. He said he was finishing up a couple of projects and would be ready to demo next week; I just don't know what day. Everything is in place, just waiting for the contractor to get started.

The actual delivery went pretty smoothly. 

At first, they started bringing the boxes in the front, but decided it would be more efficient to go through the back. They did an excellent job of not tearing up the yard.

The boxes fit almost perfectly

And now I wait some more.

{Friday Foto Friends} Winds, Sky, and a Recipe

Deb at Breathing in Grace hosts this linky most Fridays. I take it as an opportunity to let y'all know what's going on during the week in the Small Town.
Last Friday, I received a phone call from a tree service that I hired a month and a half ago. I almost called him on Thursday to ask if he was going to be able to trim our trees, because if he wasn't, we were going to have to pay someone else just a little more to get it done. We had a branch from the hickory tree outside of our living room window that was pushing against the window. The guy called on Friday and said that they were about 45 minutes from being finished with a job not far from me, so if I was going to be home, they would come by and clean the trees. I wasn't about to tell him 'no', so they came and conquered.

Trees being cleaned up in our yard.

It turned out to be an extremely good thing, because we had a horrendous storm on Saturday night. Big oak trees fell, and many fell on power lines and houses. I drove by my parents' house before Mass on Sunday, not expecting to see anything. I was in for a surprise:

Oak tree and landscaping fallen;
It reminded me of Wonder Works.

It was heartbreaking to see this tree on the ground. Daddy landscaped the area below it; he even won a beautification award for it & had an article in the newspaper. And, my brother spent a lot of time cleaning and weeding that area out the day before (I think it was). Luckily, it just missed the house. That is no exaggeration, either. 
None of us expected to spend our Memorial Day weekend cleaning up. A guy drove by on Sunday and asked if he could have the wood. He was told that if he sawed it, he could have it. He spent most of the day Sunday and Monday sawing and loading up the wood. As it turned out, he was the son of 1 (or more) of my sibling's classmates.  (Small town, remember?)

The great clean-up

Just to give an example of how close the tree came to the house:

The tree fell too close to the house for comfort.

And just how old the tree was:

The many rings on the tree

So, how did the landscaping and trunk get turned over?  Funny you should ask! CH got to play with his winch. It actually came in pretty handy to have a redneck for a husband! 😉

Our house was fine; we were only without power until Sunday around 2:00. I wasn't going to complain about not having internet knowing people were without power! The good thing was that it wasn't humid, or very hot over the weekend. 

The top of a tree fell on a power line just behind us & took out the power box.

CH had another chance to use his winch to pull down our next-door-neighbor's top of a tree that was stuck.

I shot these pictures one evening as I sat on the couch. These pictures all have the same settings. Every time I sat down and looked out, the colors changed.

It was amazing to see how the sky changed. The settings were not changed for each picture.

I tried a new recipe: Steak Burrito Bowl from Six Sisters' Stuff. This is definitely a keeper! This is one of the few times CH and YS have had no suggestions of add-ins or changes to make a dish taste better. YS did the staging for me.

Steak Burrito Bowl from Six Sisters' Stuff
A bottled Sangria paired very well with it!

After 5 years, the radio in my car was having issues. First it was the bluetooth. Kia said that there was an update that messed it up with Androids. Great. It wasn't under warranty any longer, and it was suggested that another radio (not a stock radio) would be less expensive than if the dealership put one in. Lately, my radio was just resetting by itself. Yeah, it was pretty aggravating! At CH's suggestion, I went to the place that he's used a couple of times and he hooked me up with a new radio.

New radio!

You don't realize how much you appreciate bluetooth until you don't have it. Not having a hands-free radio was not fun. AND, I got 3 free months of SiriusXM, which I had canceled a couple of months ago.
And...that's it. Finally! It's been a busy week, and next week is going to be just as busy, if not busier. I'm going to try to rest up this weekend and hopefully get a 2nd wind!

{State of the Kitchen} Part 2: And Now We Wait

No progress yet

My kitchen looks the same as it did last week, doesn't it? Well, it may be because I used the same picture, but believe me, nothing's changed. It's not that we haven't done anything, it's just a waiting game now.
Sunday, we had an appointment to pick out the back splash & order the range and hood. Buying the range was no big deal. I had one picked out, and we got to actually look it over at Sears. Honestly, I wasn't very impressed with the person there who came to help us. He seemed more interested in getting the jump on other sales associates than helping us. He could've sold a dryer, but he was jumping around to 2 other people, so Home Depot just made a sale!
Back to the kitchen. Things should start hopping next week: the range is supposed to be delivered on Monday; the cabinets on Wednesday. I had to order the hood online; it was only on sale online. It has an estimated delivery date of Wednesday.
With the range ordered, it was time to pick out the back splash. I didn't have a clue what to pick out, and when the designer took us down the aisle with the tile...I was extremely overwhelmed. She explained each of the different groups of tiles, and then started narrowing down. I found some tile that is very similar to what we thought we wanted a few years ago when we started dreaming about this remodel. I showed it to her, and her creativity kicked in. When she showed me the individual rectangular tile, my first thought was that I didn't really want white tile. Then she showed me the trick of wetting the tile to see what it will look like with the sealer and grout. There are all kinds of subtle colors in there!
To keep the cost down, she suggested 4 rows of the wall tile, then 6 rows of the smaller, followed by 1 row (it may not be a complete row) of the single tile. The smaller tile costs about 3 times more than the other. She suggested a grout color, which is great because I couldn't even begin to think about how to pick out that! When we first went to the tile aisle, she brought a sample of the door color and the counter tops. Since I have a hard time visualizing stuff, she laid everything out so I could get an idea of what it will look like:

Whew! That was a lot easier than I thought it would be, thanks to the designer! 
So now we wait. Apparently the contractor won't schedule demolition until that part is paid for. I expected a phone call on Tuesday with the cost of the tile along with what else I needed to pay for to get things going. I'd like to have a date so I'll know how quickly I need to pack up the kitchen, and get it prepared to receive the cabinets.
As I was looking over the charges from the contractor, I thought the cost of the installing the tile was a bit high. I have a couple of friends who do this for a living, so I asked one of them if he would mind coming out and giving me an estimate. If he can beat that price, then I'll let my friend do it. If not, then the contractor can do it. That will be the last thing that will have to be done, so we're not even close to even really thinking about that. 
And now we wait. Hopefully not for too much longer. I'm just a little antsy today knowing that I'm going to have all of these cabinets and the range in my kitchen area, and no start date. I'm sure the designer will come through for me; I just can't say enough good things about her so far. 😉