Ce n’est rien. C’est une cauchemar.

by chuckofish

I keep telling myself “it’s nothing” but when I’m being realistic, I admit that it IS a nightmare. And so the kitchen saga continues. This week our new dishwasher was delivered and installed. “Yay!”, thought I. Alas, we can’t use it because, as you can see,

the door crashes into the stove! The stove installation required a new circuit box that sticks out a couple inches from the wall and so pushes the stove forward — hence the dishwasher problem. I’ve been trying to contact our contractor, who, naturally, has not answered either my email or phone calls. Oh, and you’ll also notice that we still have no counters. I called the companies from which the contractor allegedly ordered them only to discover that he had not done so. No wonder he’s gone silent. Lest anyone think that the DH and I are super naive and stupid, I would say in our defense that we have worked with this contractor several times before, and we never had any trouble. Previous experience suggested we could trust him. I guess we were wrong. There’s a lesson here somewhere…

Well, I could sit around gnashing my teeth, but life is too short. The DH is in Baltimore this weekend so I have no car,  and since the temperature outside is a balmy -6 and we are due to get about 8″ of snow, I’m taking the opportunity to paint the old, abused sideboard that goes in my kitchen. After sanding it looked like this:

This poor thing needs a facelift more than I do! I spent yesterday sanding and priming and now I am all set to paint. Preparation is quite a process: clean; sand; clean; sand; clean; prime; sand; clean; prime; sand and clean once last time. I took this picture about halfway through:

By the time I finished last night I could hardly move, and I must say that I’m feeling the effects this morning. However, I’m determined to get to work right after I finish this post and have one more cup of tea. After all, I’m burning daylight!

UPDATE: The first coat of paint is on!

The messy looking part is just the underside of where the drawers go — I’m being careful everywhere else. Now I’m off for a light sand before the second coat. Wish me luck!