Blog de Puree

The excitement continued today and yesterday, with the testing of the dishwasher on Saturday morning. We loaded it up with all of our daily dishwear, testing the slots and spots where the respective dishes might fit. The dishwasher takes a boat-load of stuff. And to my military mind, it was nice to see the dishes [...]

It’s Saturday morning and I’m sitting at the island kitchen, on one of our new Asian style stools while I type away over a hot cup of tea. It’s raining out, which I can see out our new kitchen windows and the wonderful new back door. I can hear house sparrows chirping away outside. There’s [...]

We’re close. So very close.
Yesterday, the plumber came out and officially installed all the appliances! (They no longer tease me from their boxes.)
Today, the electrician is here to hook up all the outlets to the circuit breakers and do his finish work. So things are really cookin’ (pun intended!).
We’re still waiting on our replacement cabinets, [...]

After such a busy weekend, sanding and staining all the trim in the kitchen, you’d think we’d be finished. But, we’re not.
On Monday, after the 2nd coat of stain settled, we were back at it, this time with a 320-grit sandpaper sponge and a tack cloth. The purpose? To smooth the tiny bits of wood [...]

In what is possibly the best fundraiser ever, we awoke to a yard full of pink flamingos!

Sponsored by a donation from our next-door neighbors (former band geeks themselves), the Amesbury High School Band created this festive piece of yard decor overnight. While the display is awesome, we will gladly pay (the non-required) donation to have [...]

As most of our family knows, we live in a bungalow home. From the research we’ve done so far, it looks like our home is a hybrid of the craftsman bungalow and a beach cottage. (We’re a scant 5 miles from the beach.) Since moving in, we’ve been planning and working to shift the house [...]

Our back hallway is finished and looking like it used to (with the exception of the changed/moved walls). I primed on Tuesday, painted the walls on Wednesday and finished by painting the ceiling and all the wood trim today. So the back hall now matches up beautifully with the rest of the hall. Also, since [...]

Randye has an off day, and what does she do. Watch daytime TV? No. Shopping? Not! Waste the day away? Hardly.
But she took the time to finish sanding some spackled areas in the hall. Then she primed the back hall walls, ceiling and trim. Then she swapped out door hardware on a couple of doors [...]

The granite counters arrived and were installed today, and the counter company has continued its less-than-stellar service record. (We previously had to come up with a solution with an extra piece of granite near the refrigerator because they guy who took measurements didn’t account for a cabinet piece, despite the fact that our contractor was [...]

It’s been a crazy-busy weekend, starting on Friday. We spent approximately 15 hours working on our kitchen this weekend. Rather than spend the money to have the contractors deal with the finishing work on the wood columns and assorted trim pieces, we decided to take that on ourselves.
After cleaning the chimney on Thursday, Randye applied [...]