Rising from the Ashes (er, Constuction Dust)

This week brought some major changes. On Tuesday, after several delays, we finally have a functioning boiler/water heater/space-age thingy. Obviously, we have yet to test the heating capabilities but the water heater gets a big thumbs up. Maybe it's the fact that I don't hear well, but I'm amazed at how quiet it is running; and, once we have those cabinet doors installed, I doubt I'll even remember that it's there (Andy says he can hear it, but I figure I'll be spending the most time in the kitchen anyway ;o) ).

Also on Tuesday, our countertops were installed along with about half of the appliances. I'm salivating over the new rangetop and can't wait to try it out. I have a list of recipes I want to try ASAP. Hopefully I won't go bonkers and try them all at once.

The painters were here today to finish painting downstairs and it looks GREAT! Andy and I limited ourselves to the historic colors in the Benjamin Moore collection (about 300 choices vs. about 5000), and I'm really happy with the way things turned out.

And finally, the siding guys have been here for the past few days, pounding away. The BAR mandated that as much of the original siding as possible must be saved, so they have the undesirable task of pulling off the sub-standard siding, and piecing in new stuff. On the front, this meant loosing about 90% of the original. Our house looked pretty bad for about 24 hours there. We've got paint swatches for the exterior up on the house, so we're taking the weekend to figure out which one to use. Tough call.

A few pictures of the emerging kitchen:









Sadly, it was not all good news this week as we hit some major snags with the tile we selected for the backsplash. We're still trying to iron things out, but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to salvage the situation and move forward.