Wooden It Be Lovely

The last several weeks have been frantic. We ordered doors (unfinished) , ripped lumber for door jambs and window trim, ran those a gazillion times through the planer, then sanded, stained and finished them all.

We decided we wanted the interior wood trim and the doors to match the kitchen cabinets, so we got the stain from the cabinet company. The cabinet shop owner, Scott Selix says, "We use a lacquer based stain, then we spray on a lacquer finish." No problem, I thought, I'll just buy the stain from them and get lacquer finish at Lowe's or someplace. When it was time to start staining the wood, I opened the can and about fell over from the fumes. What the heck is in that stuff? After some investigation I discovered that lacquer is based on alcohol, naptha and ether. Break out the mask! The mask helped but a good north breeze was a blessing. We also decided to let the stain dry for 48 hours, then use varithane to finish it instead of a lacquer finish. So far, nothing has caught fire, melted, or blown up.

In our spare time, and on rainy days, we worked on inside projects, specifically grouting the tile and starting the hardwood floors. Ed did the hard part, applying the grout, and I did the rest, cleaning the excess and sponging.

After we got that finished, we started on the hardwood floors. Except for the part about being bent over a floor nailer for hours and hours, it's a lot of fun. But we're very happy with the result. We bought the Lumber Liquidator's house brand and are very pleased with the quality of the product.

This is Brazilian Cherry, and while this picture shows a lighter color than the floor actually is, the wood will darken over time to a fairly dark wood.

Then in his spare time, Ed built the shelves in the pantry. Of course they didn't stay empty for long. The things were barely up before I started putting stuff away. I think having no kitchen has been the hardest part of this entire process for me.

The cabinets come Wednesday, so yesterday afternoon, our neighbor Mike came down to help Ed get the stove upstairs. The stove cleared the stair rail by about a half an inch. I couldn't watch. And if you think that was fun, just wait until it's time to move the refrigerator!

But oh, the joys of installing a new appliance. We bought a Jenn-Air downdraft slide in range.

1. The screw for the vent hose is made with cheap metal and stripped out on the third turn.

2. The little pull ring on the aluminum filter pulled out with the first tug.

3. The vent grill is warped and doesn't sit snugly on the top of the stove.

4. The directions for programming the computer are a poor translation from whatever they started with, and you're pretty much on your own.

Given that we paid an exorbitant price for the darned thing, we were pretty upset. I was however pretty excited to see that the knob labeled "right front" actually turned on the right front burner.

This morning I finally figured out how to set the program from french to english, and to set the clock. Finally I figured out the timer. The rest I can ignore until later.

Meanwhile, Ed has begun moving in the door jambs. Soon we'll have a door on the bathroom. Wahoo!