Household Upheaval

No, not THAT kind of upheaval! It all started with the kitchen faucet which, as far as I can determine, dates to the late 1950s. We made one abortive attempt to replace it in the 1990s but could not find a replacement that would "fit" in the very small hole in the stainless steel kitchen sink which would could not (then or now) afford to replace. A stop-gap measure involved replacing the cartridge at that time and now it is once again leaking. As I contemplated replacing the cartridge once again, the faucet arm itself sprung a leak. The days of that faucet were once again numbered.

We needed a plumber and while we were at it, we might as well replace the countertop which was the late 1960s-early 1970s Harvest Gold (*reast-fed baby *oop yellow, is how I would describe it). And Jean decided (quite independently, though I wholeheartedly agree with her) that the disgusting (and was like that when we bought the house 20 years ago and has not improved significantly with age despite repeated incursions against its vileness) vent hood over the stove needed replacing. And while we are at it, the disposer doesn't really work very well any more since a metal object went around in it for days at a time before I had the stomach to stick my hand inside the slimy sleeve and pluck it out. ALL the other inhabitants of this house, past and present, have smaller hands than I but weaker stomachs, it appears.

We needed to call a halt there as the cost of gutting the kitchen to rid it of the Z-brick and dark cabinets was prohibitive in the context of daughter-going-to-graduate-school-for-the-next-three-years. But the minimum amount of work needed to be done to make the kitchen once again half way respectable.

Believe it or not, we found a color chip for a pre-made counter top (our contractor really wanted to make a custom-made one, "it will be a lot easier") but we are spoiled to NOT having water leaking down behind the counter, so we stuck with our guns.

The tear-out time was yesterday and the countertop is now assembled and more or less "in place". The hood has been install. The plumber comes next week to work his magic on our kitchen. To bad we didn't think to have him buy a faucet to replace the downstairs bathroom fixture. Sigh. Maybe we can leave him a note and he'll "humor" us as there is a hardware store that sells faucets just over a mile from our house.

What's that? You want pictures? Why, imagine that! Jean took some! She was most grateful for this project as it turned out that one of the cabinets was not properly installed and was held in place by only one screw and was tipped ~3/4" out from the wall at the top and was making a reasonable attempt to leave it's place in the line of cabinets for a more prominent spot...on the floor!

Technical difficulties: I tried to upload photos to Blogger 3 times without success. I have put one on Flickr and tried to upload from there. No go. I am finally, in desperation and out of time, giving you the link to the Flickr photo, in hopes of getting more photos up later when there is more time.


Kitchen Countertop