If this kitchen renovation had been a movie, Friday, September 18, would have been the end of principal photography, which means that retakes would begin the next day. That Friday was the official end of the kitchen renovation, barring a couple things pending the arrival of necessary parts in a couple weeks.
That morning I welcomed the electrician in at 7:00 AM for his final task, to wire the dishwasher. Because the dishwasher finally arrived Thursday, although it was not the dishwasher I’d originally ordered. Long story short (too late!), “expected date of delivery” actually means “we have no blessed clue when the damn thing will get here.” With no Bosch in sight, I compromised by getting a Frigidaire dishwasher the local appliance dealer had in stock. It’s here now, and that’s all that matters at this point.
Another victory last week was finding the pin thingies to hold up cabinet shelves. The contractor’s partner said they hadn’t come. I found them in an unopened box while boiling a pot of water on my new stove for the first time (yes, the gas leak got fixed the week before!) Moral: open every box yourself. Thursday I got to put most of the shelves in place and start filling them, a source of great satisfaction.
It has been an even greater satisfaction to wash the heaps of china that have been stacked about in the dining room and cellar in the new dishwasher. In the 36 years I’ve spent living on my own, I’ve had a dishwasher for only nine. This is going to be wonderful!
The Bearded One was supposed to come at 11 AM to handle a few things. But 1 PM he hadn’t shown, and I texted the contractor, who replied they’d be there at 3 PM. Which of course meant that the Bearded One showed up at 1:30. And he got right onto screwing in all the cupboard doorknobs and drawer pulls. Another victory: the missing pantry doorknobs mysteriously arrived overnight on the back porch.
At 3 the contractor and the rest of the crew showed up, and they all got very busy with the final tasks: installing the curtain rods, cleaning up the kitchen floor (the word acetone got tossed around a lot), masking the nail holes at the base of the crown molding, and planing the door into the parlor so it could actually close. I could only stand in the doorway fascinated by everything going on, feeling the end of this enormous project, unable to look away.
“You know why you have all these Irishmen in your kitchen, Rrrrrobert?” the contractor asked me. And with my usual candor I replied “Because we’re all gonna drink champagne!” And we did. I cracked open a couple bottles of Mumm Napa (and one of ginger ale for the teetotallers), which we enjoyed over 20-30 minutes of good talk.
My joy in the completion of this project disappeared with the news of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg - which is why you’re hearing about this now and not earlier. Since then I have kept myself busy filling the cabinets, washing mountains of china, and adjusting myself to a very different space. Once most everything is in place I’ll have a Big Reveal, but that’ll be sometime in mid-October.
The transition of old kitchen to new, for the moment, is best expressed in the photo at top, of my 36-year-old Revere tea kettle, which has been with me in seven apartments and looks every year of its age, and my new orange tea kettle, which should last me the rest of my life. Now that the room is almost done, I need to start inhabiting it and making it home . . . but without spotting it up too quickly!