Sunday, April 29, 2007
The kitchen is officially done.
Less bang than whimper; the guy from Handyman Connection finished the tile backsplash on Wednesday, but not before going over the sloppy paint job Wolfe Homes did around the windows with a razor blade. I've hired another outfit to replace the two windows with the warped frames, so that should be completed in mid-May. I faxed off my letter to WH today - and will follow-up with a copy by regular mail - including my "adjusted" invoice that accounts for my hiring others to finish their job. We'll see what happens. If they follow form, it'll be months before I even hear back.
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I made a veggie-rice salad for K&R's barbeque last night, and was pleased that it all got eaten by the end of the evening. (We were all pleased that the dust storm stopped long enough to fire up the grill.)
The ingredients: "forbidden" rice (small-grain); halved grape tomatoes; grilled asparagus, mushrooms, and gold bell pepper; cubed Italian-style baked tofu; green olives; and a bit of dijon mayonnaise to hold it together.
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Less bang than whimper; the guy from Handyman Connection finished the tile backsplash on Wednesday, but not before going over the sloppy paint job Wolfe Homes did around the windows with a razor blade. I've hired another outfit to replace the two windows with the warped frames, so that should be completed in mid-May. I faxed off my letter to WH today - and will follow-up with a copy by regular mail - including my "adjusted" invoice that accounts for my hiring others to finish their job. We'll see what happens. If they follow form, it'll be months before I even hear back.
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I made a veggie-rice salad for K&R's barbeque last night, and was pleased that it all got eaten by the end of the evening. (We were all pleased that the dust storm stopped long enough to fire up the grill.)
The ingredients: "forbidden" rice (small-grain); halved grape tomatoes; grilled asparagus, mushrooms, and gold bell pepper; cubed Italian-style baked tofu; green olives; and a bit of dijon mayonnaise to hold it together.
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Saturday, April 07, 2007
This is one of my three-day weekends (I work a 9/80 schedule, every other Friday off), and for a change I don't have much of anything I have to do - though I'm sure I'll start thinking of stuff Sunday evening- so I've been fooling around in the kitchen.
Yesterday I made a pasta salad: grilled red pepper and asparagus, raw brocolli florets, halved grape tomatoes, green olives, and hunks of edam cheese over those snail-shaped pasta, tossed in Shiitake viniagrette and sprinkled with almonds - yum!
Today I'm making use of some of the frozen huckleberries I bought online to make a childhood treat - huckleberry pie! Made a horrible mess of the kitchen in the process of making the crust - it's about 82 F indoors, too warm really to be making a pie crust, let alone one using Canola oil - but I had fun making a mess. And soon there will be pie. Huckleberry pie!
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K & C dropped by this morning and we spent some time in the back porch. They have a baby Sonoran desert tortoise that they'll be looking for a home for maybe in the fall. It would help keep the weeds in my desertified backyard under control, though of course I'd have to fence off anything I didn't want it noshing on. And it's an easy-maintenance pet that the cats probably wouldn't eat. Well, it's something to think about - I don't have to decide now because the tortoise is still too young to adopt.
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See, I can too write a pleasant post!
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Yesterday I made a pasta salad: grilled red pepper and asparagus, raw brocolli florets, halved grape tomatoes, green olives, and hunks of edam cheese over those snail-shaped pasta, tossed in Shiitake viniagrette and sprinkled with almonds - yum!
Today I'm making use of some of the frozen huckleberries I bought online to make a childhood treat - huckleberry pie! Made a horrible mess of the kitchen in the process of making the crust - it's about 82 F indoors, too warm really to be making a pie crust, let alone one using Canola oil - but I had fun making a mess. And soon there will be pie. Huckleberry pie!
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K & C dropped by this morning and we spent some time in the back porch. They have a baby Sonoran desert tortoise that they'll be looking for a home for maybe in the fall. It would help keep the weeds in my desertified backyard under control, though of course I'd have to fence off anything I didn't want it noshing on. And it's an easy-maintenance pet that the cats probably wouldn't eat. Well, it's something to think about - I don't have to decide now because the tortoise is still too young to adopt.
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See, I can too write a pleasant post!
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Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Words cannot express how I feel right now. Music cannot express how I feel. Pushing a grand piano down six flights of stairs, now that would express how I feel.
This whole kitchen remodel business has disintegrated into a story of diminishing returns that I haven't had the energy to relate these past three months, and next week I plan to part company with my contractor as they guy I hired to finish their damn cleanup work takes over.
However.
If you've been following this blog since the beginning of this sorry saga, you'll remember that, back in October, I had the same outfit replace the remaining single-glaze windows in the house with double-glaze. Even to my untrained eye the installation looked sloppy, and getting the project supervisor out to look at it has been a major effort with minor response. Today I had a glass guy - hired separately - come in to assess the mess. Not only was the installation bad, the frames are starting to warp, which is why the windows in the guest room don't close properly. Meaning that re-installing them isn't going to help; it's replace the windows or live with it.
So I'm going to have a real glass company install new windows, and I'm writing a letter to my contractor requesting that they refund that part of the job on my final invoice, and we'll see where that gets me. I hope I don't have to take them to small claims court, or Channel 12, or whatever. @#$(*$! I am so tired of fighting to get this work completed.
1 comments
This whole kitchen remodel business has disintegrated into a story of diminishing returns that I haven't had the energy to relate these past three months, and next week I plan to part company with my contractor as they guy I hired to finish their damn cleanup work takes over.
However.
If you've been following this blog since the beginning of this sorry saga, you'll remember that, back in October, I had the same outfit replace the remaining single-glaze windows in the house with double-glaze. Even to my untrained eye the installation looked sloppy, and getting the project supervisor out to look at it has been a major effort with minor response. Today I had a glass guy - hired separately - come in to assess the mess. Not only was the installation bad, the frames are starting to warp, which is why the windows in the guest room don't close properly. Meaning that re-installing them isn't going to help; it's replace the windows or live with it.
So I'm going to have a real glass company install new windows, and I'm writing a letter to my contractor requesting that they refund that part of the job on my final invoice, and we'll see where that gets me. I hope I don't have to take them to small claims court, or Channel 12, or whatever. @#$(*$! I am so tired of fighting to get this work completed.
1 comments
