$11,238

That's how much Homely Despot wanted to reface our existing cabinets. It literally is cheaper to have a local cabinet maker install new cabinets of exceptional quality (solid wood panels on the ends of cabinets, dovetail drawers with upgraded sliders, etc). Seeing is believing (I colored out the names to protect the innocent and not so innocent)...note how they are giving a $500 discount if I signed by 5/9...otherwise it would be $11,738:

One job Homely Despot lost the sale on...

Glass Blowers...

When we lived in Jersey, Paul used to drive down to Princeton where he worked. On the way there was a glass company which had a sign "Glass Blowers." Strangely enough, on Monday mornings as Paul drove to work, he noticed the "G" and the "L" disappeared over the weekend.

Anyway, here is the glass tile we plan on using as an accent in the back-splash of our kitchen counter top...at least for now. The rest of the backs-plash will be 3"x6" biscuit subway tile.

Northstar Ceramics White Blend11T
(A135,A145,A146,A164,A174)

And the (unofficial) winner is...

A local cabinet shop...

Our kitchen remodel planning phase continues. After looking at a number of options, we decided to go with new cabinets. Home Depot wanted over $11,400 to reface our existing cabinets (no joke!). So we obtained some local quotes on refacing (half of what Homely Despot wanted but with better quality). In the end the uncertainty of what it will actually look like when re-finished turned us off.

So we are going with a local cabinet maker who has an excellent reputation (he won us over with their cabinet quality and design). Right now it looks like quartersawn red oak will be the the wood of choice with a shaker style cabinet (as we like the look and it reflects our red oak flooring through out the house). The wall between the kitchen and the dining room will be opened up. We still have to pick our tile and Corian surfaces.

This is the plan we expect to go with...
...the cabinets on the far right would face into the dining room..

Narrowed the list to (from l. to r.)...
...natural maple, natural oak, qs red oak, qs white oak...
...on a piece of our misison style furniture...

...the order preserved, our choices on our red oak flooring...


...our likely choice...

Stump me

When we bought our house (almost 10 years ago!) there was this sizable stump in the back yard. Because of additions to the house, there was no way to get a stump grinder back there. So we had someone use a chainsaw and cut it close to the ground and let it compose over the years. Now that Sammy is mobile, we needed to remove it for once and all.

Paul's nephew Chris was kind enough to come down and dig the stump out. He used a variety of tools and through sheer brute force removed it a few feet below the surface. At it's widest cross-section the stump was over 5 feet wide. As Chris worked, Sammy supervised from his sandbox.

Later on in the day it got kind of hazy. Paul thought it was from the smokers who gather 50' outside the entrance to his building at work. Later we found out it was smoke blown in from a fire way up in the Gunflint Trail (several hundred miles away!).

What follows are some snapshots from today...

Chris swinging the pickax...

...until the pickax yielded...

...so Chris switched to using a shovel...

...Chris preparing to haul away part of the stump...

...a casualty...a walnut tree was starting to grow out of the stump...

...Sammy demonstrates that...
...like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives...

...don't even think it...that is just the camera angle...

...Sammy was concentrating...
...so intensely...
...that he created a gravitational field...
...so powerful...
...that even the tree was unable to resist...

...watering down the soil Chris repacked over where the stump was...
...notice the birds grabbing a free drink...

...squinting into the sun, Sammy directs Chris's work...

...Sammy having fun in his sandbox...

A horse...of course!

Taking advantage of the great weather today, Sammy went to the park nearby at lunch time. Later on, we fired up the barbecue to cook some steak. While waiting for dinner to finish cooking, Sammy spent some time on our deck. When suddenly...

Sammy dashes across the deck...

"Do you hear something?"

"There's something out front!"

And there was...a team of beautiful black horses pulling a wagon...

"What a remarkable little boy," said one horse to the other.

Sammy gets a little closer to the team...

The owner will be offering wagon rides in our neighborhood for much of summer...

Sammy all smiles...
....he doesn't know it's his job to strip and paint the door behind him...

Sammy relaxes at the end of day...