For three quarters I was spot-on in my prediction for this game. Trubisky looked totally lost and as bad or worse than he had in any game in 2019. Missing wide open receivers, overthrowing, throwing behind. He sucked. Bad. I seriously believed they should bench him at half and bring in Foles, he was that bad. Defense also sucked. The pass rush was virtually non-existent, Mack was having a hard time beating single blockers, Stafford was having his way throwing the ball and AP was gashing them in the running game.
Finally, at the end of the 3rd quarter Bears get the ball back and I swear to God I texted my brothers and said:
Going totally homer here: OK, now it clicks and Mitch balls out and scores 3 TDS in a row here. Bears win 27-23.
And sure as shit he does that. All of a sudden Trubisky is completing beautiful passes down field and completely took charge of the game. I don’t get it. Had this game ended in a loss, I could easily see them starting Foles next week. As it is, I don’t see how they can not start him.
As usual, the Bears gave me my full 3 hours of excitement and entertainment. Sometimes utterly heart-breaking other times thrilling. Can’t wait til next week!
Let’s start this off right from the top: Hate to say it, I don’t see the Bears winning this game. The Bears defense isn’t going to dominate as everyone seems to expect and the offense for the first time in recent years will be stymied by the Lions defense.
Mitch Trubisky has played some of his best games vs. the Lions. According to most people who know way more about this than me, this is because under head coach Matt Patricia, the Lions tend not to disguise their coverage or use many stunts when rushing the QB. As a result, what Trubisky sees pre-snap is what he encounters after the play starts. However, this is Patricia’s third year with Detroit and the general consensus is if they don’t improve and make the playoffs this year, both he and their General Manager will be out. Accordingly, Detroit brought in a new Defensive Coordinator and, if everyone I’ve read recognizes the reason Trubisky has been so successful against the Lions is because of how they play their defense, I have to believe the Lions know this too and will finally be prepared for him. I expect them to do things on defense designed to confuse Trubisky and he’ll regress to his 2019 self of stupid indecision and leave the offense struggling.
On the defensive side of the ball for some reason most people I read seem to be discounting the fact that both their edge rushers, Khalil Mack and Robert Quinn are injured with Quinn listed as doubtful. In the first half of last season, Matt Stafford was playing some of the best football of his career before he got injured. Word is this season he’s looking even better and people are expecting him to pick up right where he left off last year. Without Quinn and Mack putting pressure on Stafford, he will have plenty of time to pick apart the Bears defense.
With the offense struggling and the defense unable to pressure Stafford consistently, I see the Bears struggling and eventually losing this game. I hope I’m wrong.
Final score
Bears 17
Lions 24
LOL, learning something every time I post here. I just assumed my “replies” would be threaded somehow. :) It’s kinda fun feeling like a newbie again.
Guess I should have looked at my timeline before I posted! I’ll be honest, I’m not used to being part of an online community. Just a long time lurker on many places. I think I’ll reply to people individually.
OK, I’ll be honest, it’s been done for a few weeks now, I’m just finally getting around to writing about it. I won’t bore you with all the details of getting the “final” bill only to have items we had to haggle over. I just want to say when your contractor won’t give you credit for unused material they purchased because it’s open and you ask for the material back since you paid for it, and when you get it back from them, you see the “opened” part consists of them having pulled open 1 of the four flaps on the cover, but none of the material is actually used, you know your contractor is trying to screw you over.
But it’s done. We won’t ever do business with Property Revival again. The final payment was made on September 18, 140 days after the “9 week” project started May 1.
Enough bitching. As promised, here are some before and after pictures of the whole thing. Sit back and enjoy the carousel. We actually like our kitchen a lot and can’t wait to host our big family Thanksgiving dinner.
I recently said to my wife, I wanted to watch a boring Bears game. By that I meant I wanted to see the Bears score quickly, take charge of the game and cruise to an easy victory with the end never in any doubt.
Today, I got that game.
I could not have been more wrong in my prediction earlier today when I said I doubted Trubisky would make the plays downfield he would need to make to win this game. He made those plays all game long. This is the kind of offensive performance most fans have been hoping the Bears would have all season and today they delivered.
Off to a bye-week and then they go to Miami. I’m excited to see what changes the Bears make and how they perform after the bye.
The Bears started a somewhat surprising 2-1 this season. Most of that on the back of the defense which is unsurprising given the addition of Khalil Mack. This week they face another surprisingly good team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Can the Bears beat them and move to 3-1 on the season? I won’t be surprised if they don’t.
So far this season, the Bucs back-up quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick has been surprisingly good. Over 400 yards passing per game and 11 touchdowns. That’s impressive. From what I’ve read though, he hasn’t been pressured and he doesn’t do well under pressure. This favors the Bears who have one of the best, if not the best, front 7 in the NFL. I expect them to get to Fitzpatrick and force him to make a number of mistakes. That’s the good news.
On the other side, Tampa Bay has a pretty good run defense which will force the Bears to rely on Trubisky to make plays downfield. From what we’ve seen so far, that probably won’t happen. Eventually Trubisky is going to get comfortable in the pocket and make those plays, I’m just not sure that will happen this week.
In the end, I expect the Bears offense will be effectively stymied and the defense will be mostly effective but still have a couple of blown plays resulting in scores.
We’re giving up. Coming up on day 100 of the Great Kitchen Remodel and they still aren’t done. Though I think I’m done blogging about it until they are.
It hasn’t been totally silent. Last week Monday they installed the pop-up outlet. That’s pretty cool. Of course, that was the only thing that happened last week. Today they came in a cleaned up a few odds and ends, but that was it. Who knows what else will be done or when it will be done. They don’t really talk to us much any more other than tell us they have to get the plumber back in, they have to get the tile guy back in, they have to get the electrician back in…sigh.
At this point, I’m just hoping they’re done by Thanksgiving. But until then, I’m done writing about this fiasco. Next post will be when it’s all done and I hope to have some before and after pics to sum it all up.
I’ve been slacking a little bit lately. They’ve been here doing things in bits and pieces. They got the backsplash for the range in place. They cleaned. They got the microwave installed and did some additional electrical stuff (but of course, didn’t install the popup outlet because we’re still lacking a hole). And I haven’t been blogging any of that.
Because we just want them done!!!
This is just dragging on way too long and we’re both getting a bit worn out by the whole process. We just want them done and out of our house. The last two days they’ve made some progress by finishing tiling some additional backsplash. This was an extra.
We went from this.
To this.
After they got the backsplash on the other wall, Dena was looking around and decided she wanted it continued there in that little opening. So we did it. We’re pretty happy. We think it helps tie the whole room together a bit more.
Still a few more odds and ends and we still might not have the whole lien thing worked out yet. I’ll check on the status of that tomorrow. I think it’s taken care of but one more call to be sure.
Yep. Let’s see, last post was Day 74, this is Day 82. So in 8 days they were able to drill 2 holes.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate. In those intervening 8 days besides drilling 2 holes they did come back and repaint the kitchen (getting paint on the cabinets and trim in the process) and a cleaning crew came in and cleaned the entire kitchen and foyer. (Why have a cleaning crew come in to clean when there is still some pretty major work to be done? I don’t know.)
But still, progress has been painfully slow lately. We actually have neighbors coming up to us now.
Neighbor What are you having done?
Us The kitchen.
Neighbor That’s it!?!
Yes, we sheepishly admit, that’s it. I get there are delays in any project, but this is getting a bit ridiculous. It’s not like we’ve been asking for a bunch of last-minute changes. They just aren’t very good at scheduling things.
Oh well, the two holes are there to be filled by an air gap for the dishwasher and a switch for the disposal. A little push-button thingie right there in the surface of the countertop.
We’re also having a pop-up outlet installed in the middle of the island. This one in fact. It’ll be a round thing you push down on and it pops up and you got 2 outlets and 2 USB ports to plug things in. When done, push it back down and it’s out of the way. We liked that idea better than hanging cords off the side to plug things in. But, of course, when the guys were here drilling holes for the air gap and the switch, they couldn’t drill the hole for the outlet because they didn’t have the right drill bits with them. So, now they’ll have to come back some time next week and finish that up.
The electrician should be here next week as well to install the rest of the electrical stuff. (Except the pop-up outlet of course, he’ll probably have to come back later to finish that up.) Then that’ll just about wrap it up for major stuff. Then comes the dreaded punch-list. We get to go around and list all the things we see wrong that we want them to come fix (like finish installing the range for example) and then wait for them to come fix it. At this rate, we’re honestly wondering if we’ll have our kitchen done by Thanksgiving. Which we’d better cause we’ll be having our families over just like we do every year.
But in the meanwhile, we’ve actually started to use it all a little bit. Last Sunday we roasted a chicken in the oven.
See, when I was busy analyzing every aspect of kitchen ranges trying to pick out the one I wanted (no, I’m not obsessive about these things, just a bit picky) the Capital range was high on the list but it came with this rotisserie. My thought at that time was, “When are we ever going to use a rotisserie?” But, in the end I liked that one the most so we got it—even if I thought I’d never actually use that giant metal fork thingie.
Flash forward to last sunday and we say, “Hey, let’s roast a chicken!” So we do.
Comes with that massive metal rod which has a place way in the back corner for you to stick it. After, of course, you impaled your meat on it. Then you just turn it on and let the rotisserie magic happen (and put a pan underneath it otherwise you’ll have a huge mess all over the bottom of your oven).
Hour or so later and, damn, that came out looking good.
So we carved it up.
And ate it.
Those beans are from our garden. The bird was stuffed with lots and lots of herbs from our herb garden as well. We were both surprised at just how juicy and flavorful it was. We could actually taste all the fresh basil, oregano and thyme I stuffed in there. It was amazing.
So guess what, we’ll be using the rotisserie again. I’m glad we got it. Oooh, maybe I’ll rotisserie the turkey for Thanksgiving!
So that’s the end of my story for today. Hope you’ll join me all next time on
There it is. I think we’re entering the final stretch. Electrician was here and he put in all the outlets, switches and ceiling lights. Makes a real difference. Looking almost done.
Here’s a closer-up shot of the actual lights over the island. Dena has a really good eye for that sort of thing. She picks well.
And we got flames too! Check this out. Six full burners of bright blue flames. Not sure I’ll ever cook six things at once, but you never know. Thanksgivings get mighty crowded around here sometimes.
Back Monday to paint, and tile, and fix the one pantry cabinet, and finish up some plumbing and finish up some electrical. Yeah, right. That’s the plan at least. Seems a bit unrealistic to me given how pokey this whole thing has been. But, we’ll see.
Until then, we may actually cook something on our new range this weekend. I’ll let you know if we do.
Heh, notice that little black spot on the wall next to the duct-work? That’s a hole in the wall. You may recall seeing previous pics where they had the duct coming out of the wall and the wire coming out next to it. When it was there I thought to myself, “Self, I’m not sure the hood duct work is gonna cover that up. Looks mighty far away.” But honestly, with all the times I’ve tried to warn them about things and they’ve brushed me off telling me not to worry about it, I just let it be. And see, they figured it out. They must have, cause it works!
You can’t hear it, but the fan’s running in that picture.
So that was nice to see. It’s always a bit of a surprise to see what’ll be different when I get home. Like I said previously, we aren’t really on schedule, but things are progressing. Next they’re gonna be in tomorrow to grout the backsplash. And no “I am Grout!” jokes this time.
Your basic off-white subway tile with a little strip of highlight. Those are a mix of glass and tile. Brings out the same sort of colors in the floor and walls and cabinets.
OK, so I’m getting a bit silly with the titles on these posts. Shoot me. Looks like they found another plumber cause he was here today and got some stuff hooked up.
Got the dishwasher hooked up (sort-of) and installed. There’s plumbing for it all there but there’s still no outlet to plug it in. Guess next step is electrical. To the right is our sink and faucet.
Didn’t realize when we bought it that it came with those grids to put on the bottom or that metal thingie to the left. Turns out that can completely span one of the sinks, front to back, and you can use it as a drying rack or dripping rack or something. Those are square rods and the whole thing turns out to be pretty sturdy. And then it rolls up into a little bundle. It’s pretty cool.
That was really it for today. Still have quite a bit to finish up: painting, tile, electrical. I’m sure it’ll get done but we’re getting pretty tired of this whole process. We just want it done.
Oh, one more thing, we did buy some stools today also to go around the eating end. The Madison Swivel stool from Amisco. The body is made of metal and will be a rubbed bronze like the handles. The seat will be a dark fabric and the back…well, the middle slat in the back is going to be wood colored the same as the cabinets. Except they don’t make that color so we ordered them unfinished. I’ll have to finish them myself once they come in. They’ll look good there.
Heh, so on the third, we got a notice in our mailbox of a certified letter waiting for us that required a signature. It said the sender was Grams & Associates. Well, that sounded interesting. So a quick DuckDuckGo search turns up David F. Grams & Associates, S.C. Attorneys at Law. They’re a law firm in Madison specializing in Trusts and Estates and Business Law. Got me interested. So of course, this is now a holiday so I have to wait to be able to go get the letter. Luckily for me, I usually work from home on Fridays so today I was able to run and pick it up. Here’s what it said.
For those who don’t want to zoom in it says in part:
The undersigned Subcontractor, having contracted with Property Revival LLC, performed, … plumbing work to improve your Property located at … and, as of the date of this Notice, is owed the sum of $725.00 for said work. If payment in full is not received within thirty (30) days … the Subcontractor intends to file a Claim for Lien on your Property.
Wonderful.
So me, being the smart-ass I am texts Jerry, the contractor.
Jim: Hey Jerry, got a problem with your plumber?
Jerry: uh, yeah…
I honestly have no idea what’s going on but I was assured he and his lawyers have the situation well in hand and I don’t have to worry about it. I’m actually not worried. I suspect these kind of spats happen all the time. But it is something to keep an eye on.
Maybe next remodeling project I’ll be my own general contractor and avoid all this crap.
Meanwhile, absolutely nothing has happened on the house. Plumbing issues aside, I’m sure the holidays messed up scheduling. We’re hopeful folks will be in next week to actually finish this up. We’re getting tired of this.
I’m lying here again. This all happened Friday, but we took off right after work to go see our son at UND where he’s off learning to become a commercial airline pilot. He really likes it there–well, not exactly likes it. He loves flying but could really do without the winters. So he likes to spend his summers up there taking flying classes so he can stay ahead in his program and fly lots. We miss him, but he’s off doing what he loves. That’s important.
Anyway, we left right after work and I didn’t have time to write all this up, so I’ll just back-date this and pretend like this was all posted last Friday. Back to the kitchen.
Apparently Dena got to hear a bunch of swearing in a foreign language on Friday. The countertops arrived and she got to watch a bunch of hulky, sweaty, swarthy guys with all their muscles rippling carry in this big, honkin’ slab of quartz.
And a couple smaller pieces, but those don’t count really. She says they were saying a bunch of things she didn’t recognize but she assumes were swear words. Apparently that stuff is heavy.
But they seemed to know what they were doing because the got them in place and they look pretty darn good.
No, that faucet’s not attached. I just stuck it there to see what it would look like.
We’re actually pretty happy the snafu of a couple of weeks ago happened–recall, the one where they told us they ran out of countertop material and as a result we wouldn’t get our counters for about a month? After hearing that, Dena went out and looked at some new stuff and picked out a different style that she thought she liked better. Turns out, she was right.
The new stuff has more of a brown tone to it with flecks of gold-ish rather than the more pure black with streaks of white. We really like how this blends with everything else we got going on in here. It’s coming along.
Today, (the real today, Monday) they came and finished up the trim. Looks real nice. That guy does a real nice job on the trim. The rest of this week is supposed to be some finish plumbing, painting (they’re gonna re-paint the walls), and then backsplash tiling. So I hope to have more posts as the week wears on.
Well, today was a busy day. After a couple of weeks of nothing and a bit of stress all of a sudden today the appliances were delivered, they started to put trim in place and we got the tree damage from the other week cleaned up.
First came the appliance guys. Well, actually they came second, but the trim guys got here before the trim so they were pretty much just standing around waiting. Then the appliance guys showed up so they get first billing. Besides, the title, “Appliances, Trim and Trees” has a nicer ring to it.
The appliances showed up. The first question they ask, “Are you ready for them to be installed?” My answer, “Nope.” Lemme explain.
See, we had this delay with the countertops, but I was told to schedule the appliance delivery for the 28th anyway. So I did. Well, as this week was approaching, I’m emailing them saying, “Are you sure they should be delivering the appliances?” My concern was the electrical and plumbing wasn’t done yet so they wouldn’t be able to plug in or hook up the waterline on the fridge. The range was OK, that already had a gas line and an outlet, but I was a wee-bit concerned about the fridge.
When I point this out to Property Revival, their response was, “Sure, that’s fine. Have them deliver and install it.”
Me says, “How are they going to hook them up?”
They say, “It’s fine, have them deliver and install it.”
Me says, “How are they going to hook them up?”
They say, “We told you before it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”
Finally on Tuesday we had a bit of a heart to heart and all of a sudden they’re saying, “Uh, hmm, we’ll get back to you on that.”
So they scrambled and were able to get the electrician to come out Wednesday and hook up the electrical, but the plumber couldn’t make it.
Forward to today and we decide to let them install them both without the waterline for the fridge. Property Revival will then have to pull it out, install the waterline, and then put it back. People.
Now that the fun story is over time for some appliance porn.
I finally got my fridge. I like that. That’s exactly how I was picturing this looking. And it works!
Yeah, it’s not totally in place yet. A little more story. See, turns out the range is a direct wired hookup, no plug, it has to be hard-wired in place and we have a plug there. Also, the gas line coming up from the floor sticks up too high so the plumber will have to shorten it. So the range isn’t exactly in place quite yet, but both of those things should be done tomorrow. Stay tuned.
And while all that was going on, the trim showed up and the trim guys got to work. I have to say, they do a really nice job. They put in the cabinets and now they’re finishing up the baseboard and door trim. We like it.
Professionals. Way better at mitered corners than I am.
And now on to the final topic of this post. Last week, we had some storms come through Janesville. Not officially a tornado, but as I was driving down one of the main streets to my house after work there was an awful lot of tree damage and crews out. I said to myself, “uh, oh.”
I got home and the front was fine, but one of the trees in back, not so much.
Bummer.
We were finally able to get Paul’s Tree Service to come out here and get it cleaned up for us. They did nice work.
And that’s the end of my grand adventure for the day! Pretty hectic first thing in the morning, but turned out well overall.
Well, today was a busy day. After a couple of weeks of nothing and a bit of stress all of a sudden today the appliances were delivered, they started to put trim in place and we got the tree damage from the other week cleaned up.
First came the appliance guys. Well, actually they came second, but the trim guys got here before the trim so they were pretty much just standing around waiting. Then the appliance guys showed up so they get first billing. Besides, the title, “Appliances, Trim and Trees” has a nicer ring to it.
The appliances showed up. The first question they ask, “Are you ready for them to be installed?” My answer, “Nope.” Lemme explain.
See, we had this delay with the countertops, but I was told to schedule the appliance delivery for the 28th anyway. So I did. Well, as this week was approaching, I’m emailing them saying, “Are you sure they should be delivering the appliances?” My concern was the electrical and plumbing wasn’t done yet so they wouldn’t be able to plug in or hook up the waterline on the fridge. The range was OK, that already had a gas line and an outlet, but I was a wee-bit concerned about the fridge.
When I point this out to Property Revival, their response was, “Sure, that’s fine. Have them deliver and install it.”
Me says, “How are they going to hook them up?”
They say, “It’s fine, have them deliver and install it.”
Me says, “How are they going to hook them up?”
They say, “We told you before it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”
Finally on Tuesday we had a bit of a heart to heart and all of a sudden they’re saying, “Uh, hmm, we’ll get back to you on that.”
So they scrambled and were able to get the electrician to come out Wednesday and hook up the electrical, but the plumber couldn’t make it.
Forward to today and we decide to let them install them both without the waterline for the fridge. Property Revival will then have to pull it out, install the waterline, and then put it back. People.
Now that the fun story is over time for some appliance porn.
I finally got my fridge. I like that. That’s exactly how I was picturing this looking. And it works!
Yeah, it’s not totally in place yet. A little more story. See, turns out the range is a direct wired hookup, no plug, it has to be hard-wired in place and we have a plug there. Also, the gas line coming up from the floor sticks up too high so the plumber will have to shorten it. So the range isn’t exactly in place quite yet, but both of those things should be done tomorrow. Stay tuned.
And while all that was going on, the trim showed up and the trim guys got to work. I have to say, they do a really nice job. They put in the cabinets and now they’re finishing up the baseboard and door trim. We like it.
Professionals. Way better at mitered corners than I am.
And now on to the final topic of this post. Last week, we had some storms come through Janesville. Not officially a tornado, but as I was driving down one of the main streets to my house after work there was an awful lot of tree damage and crews out. I said to myself, “uh, oh.”
I got home and the front was fine, but one of the trees in back, not so much.
Bummer.
We were finally able to get Paul’s Tree Service to come out here and get it cleaned up for us. They did nice work.
And that’s the end of my grand adventure for the day! Pretty hectic first thing in the morning, but turned out well overall.
Finished up putting handles on all things and re-did the island. I guess they think the countertops will be heavy.
Pretty slow day. I think now we won’t see much change for a while. The countertop guys are supposed to be in tomorrow to make templates so they can go make the countertops and then come put them on. I think there will be more trim work done in the meanwhile. I’ll keep you all updated as things go by.
Back to being clever (or so I think). Looks like cabinet folks spent the day putting some handles on our cabinets. We really like them.
And here we have our floating shelves. Those too turned out super nice.
And finally, they have the outline of the table built. Love the legs we picked out.
Now we’re gonna have our first, change our mind and it’s gonna cost us, moment. We think the island is too short. That there is 9 feet long (or thereabouts). Our intention is for 4 people to sit in this area, one on each side and 2 on the end. That will work with what’s there, but if people are on the sides and the end, we think knees will be bumping. Probably not too bad, but we don’t want to feel cramped. We have the room, so we’re gonna ask them to re-do that portion and lengthen it out to 10 feet. This will give people on the sides plenty of room. Now I get to compose the email to the contractor.
That’s it. That was a nice anniversary present to us. Now we get to go out to dinner. Eating out at Clara Bo in Beloit, WI.
Yeah, no clever titles this time. Not feeling it. Got home yesterday and saw cabinets in the kitchen.
I gotta say, they look nice and this is starting to look like a kitchen.
This is where the range and range hood will go. We’re going to have white subway tile as a backsplash between the upper and lowers with an accent strip somewhere along there.
This is the view of the island and the cabinet wall (for lack of a better term. On that wall between the cabinets will be three floating shelves. Sink and dishwasher here up in the front of the picture.
And then another view of the kitchen back toward the range. The refrigerator will go in that opening to the right. The cabinets next to that are pull-out pantry-style cabinets. Those will be nice. On this end of the island the countertop will extend out a couple of feet and be our seating area. We’ll have room for one on each side and two on the end.
Next they have to finish up trim work. Put in a bit more crown molding and then the trim all around things. This was partly why I didn’t write up this post last night. We had to meet with the contractor to discuss what we wanted for trim. That took way longer than expected. With us, we take forever to really decide on things. We usually need time to let ideas settle and percolate through our minds before we’re happy with them. What makes this doubly hard is all the existing woodwork in the foyer and family room don’t really match each other and now we’re adding more stuff that doesn’t quite match any of that. Dena is having a hard time deciding what to do. We know the shape of the trim, just don’t quite know the color yet. I’m sure she’ll come up with something we’ll be happy with.
Progress! Next the counter people come in and measure so they can go make our counters. They already warned us that would take about 2 weeks so we should be patient and expect a bit of a lull again in work. So stay tuned and I’ll keep this blog updated.
Now I’m really cheating. I’m writing this two days after the date on this post. But it’s not really cheating because the work happened 2 days ago and I’m just getting around to writing about it today. Eh, who cares. I’m writing.
We had tile put in on Friday! Tile guys came, started at the far side of the kitchen and worked their way out the front door.
Here is the view from inside the kitchen.
And the view from my office.
I’m gonna blame my iPhone camera but, in person, the colors I see don’t really look like those pics. But that’s OK because I think I’m getting used to the idea that colors in general change constantly over the course of the day. Dena & I have seen this time and again, we pick out some color that’s brown, or blue, or green or whatever. We get it on the wall and say, “Whoa! that’s not the color we thought it was.” And then later in the day when the sun has moved, “Yeah! That’s the color we wanted.” Even in the same room at the same time, one wall will look one color and another, perpendicular wall will look to be a completely different color. It’s strange.
Bringing it back to the tile. What we picked out was kind of a granity-green-ish. Now that it’s in, at different times and in different places, it looks more grey or more brown. Go figure. Regardless, we like it a lot. It’s all really starting to come together. Looks good with the walls in both the foyer and the kitchen and will go nicely with the cabinets once they’re in place. Which should happen Monday because the cabinets were delivered Friday as well!
Now for the adventure part of this blog post. As many people know, when tile is laid, you have to stay off it for about 24 hours to allow the thinset (mortar) to set properly. Othewise, the tiles will shift or may even break. Given that the foyer and kitchen are central to our house we planned to spend the night in a hotel.
So I’m sitting here in my office after the guys left waiting for Dena to come home, when I hear a noise like ductwork flexing. We all know that sound from TV with the good-guy crawling through the ducts to get the bad-guy. So I start hearing that sound and I think, “Oh shit”.
See that?
That little hole way off in the corner of the kitchen is a vent. Of course the vent cover was removed for the tiling and I don’t see Molly (our cat) around anywhere. I’m convinced she went down that vent hole.
See, it’s OK for cats to walk on newly laid tile. They aren’t generally heavy enough to affect it, it’s just us fat humans that can’t walk on it. So I think I have a cat stuck in the duct work and we’re supposed to be leaving for the night and all the next day. We can’t leave her to wander around the ducts for a day. She’ll starve!
So Jim rigs up a way to spider-man-it from my office door to the basement door without disturbing too many tiles. I get down there and start moving aside those drop-ceiling tiles we have down there to try to find the duct work to see if I can somehow poke a cat out of there. Then, of course, Dena calls down, “I have Molly!” She was never in there.
Stupid cat.
So we went to dinner and stayed in a hotel here in town. Stopped back Saturday morning to feed and check on the cats (no cats in the ducts), spent a nice day with Dena’s mom helping her get some shopping done, got back last night (still not cats in ducts) and could finally walk all over it.
That’s the end of our tile adventure. Cabinets were delivered late Friday and should be put in place come Monday. Gonna really start looking like a kitchen now.
