will steal for back splash

Christine continues to be a bad influence...

My contractor Neal recommended I work with a woman he knows to pick out a back splash. She was mean to me, made some suggestions that I thought sucked, and only showed me samples from some collection that was so crap she kept it under the counter. Now, I'm not spending a million dollars on my back splash but for fuck's sake...surely something on the wall was in my price range...

So I contacted Christine and she took me to her people (she also gets a 40% discount with them). We spent an hour looking at stuff and then she got them to give me two samples. Supposedly my counter tops are going in on Wednesday (Christine pulled some strings there too - normally it takes two weeks from templating to get the counter top installed) so I should be able to pick out the back splash by the end of this week.

She also just sent me some pictures of back splashes with comments:

Haha. Stealing my back splash might mean one thing in my kitchen was on budget. Unless I get arrested, like my dad.

Wah. I love it and I'm sure I can't afford it. Rats!

Got to keep Neal happy...

In other news, Pascal told me he laughs every time I send him an email about my back splash because in UK back splash means piss that splashes back on you when using the urinal. That's why they say splash back instead.

randomness not so random

I was logging on to my VPN today with my securID and this happened:

I've also been keeping a log of the numbers when I log in and have noticed what seems to be an excessive amount of the number sequence "234". Which makes me wonder about randomness of my securID.

Why am I tracking the numbers when I log in, you may ask, and then analyzing them. Because I have fucking asperger's. That's what we do.

fancy faucet

My fancy bathroom faucet came today...

And each piece was enclosed in a sack. Like when you buy expensive shoes.

It's even cooler looking in real life.

kitchen, painted

Today the guy came to do the templating for my granite counter tops. It was kind of weird. He put thick paper strips down on the counters and then glued it together to make a sort of paper frame. It seemed kind of low tech.

Christine and Neal also laughed about my painting issues. I'm going to try to get them fixed by Wednesday, which means tuesday night is painting night...ech...

Here's what the kitchen looks like painted.

You can see where the paint color changes. Ech.

home depot and lowes - paint idiots

I knew I was going to have to repaint parts of my kitchen so I went to Lowe's and got some paint since they are the only place that carries Ralph Lauren paint (I thought). My whole house practically is painted with Ralph Lauren cream stone.

Well, the dude at Lowe's gave me a paint called cream stone, but it was their line of paint, not ralph lauren (they don't carry RL anymore). Their cream stone is greenish, but I didn't notice at first when I was painting.

I know it doesn't look like a big difference, until you get it on the wall. The RL is on the left, Lowe's paint on the right and on the mix stick.

I got all of the ceiling painted, and then most of the walls, and ran out of paint around 6 PM last night. I went to home depot and wasted 20 minutes waiting for a guy to mix my paint (think he was spending more time sniffing it than mixing it). Got home and realized...it was the right color, but it wasn't the color I had painted the rest of the kitchen.

Fucking fuck. I was NOT about to repaint the kitchen.

So I went back to home depot this morning (I know, I'm stupid, should have gone to Lowe's), got some paint, finished painting while talking to my dad on the phone...and then realized the new paint didn't match the old paint. At first I thought it was because the new paint was wet. But no, it's because it doesn't match.

Grr.

And of course I did touch ups on every wall with the non-matching paint.

So I guess I'm going to Lowe's tomorrow. Unless I perish from paint fumes in the mean time...

have cabinets, will...put stuff in them

Neal got most of the cabinets and the island built this week. The upper right brown cabinet was damaged so I have to wait until next week to have them all in. Progress!

Came home thursday night...kitchen progress! Should throw some wine in that wine rack.

The island with the pantry in the background.

This window is finally unblocked! Think the round shelves look great (my idea to put them there, of course).

It's going to be a great party space. Too bad most of my friends live really far away.

Friday Neal informs me I need to get the whole ceiling and kitchen painted. By tomorrow. Ech.

The island. The dishwasher is going where that hole is.

FINALLY! A closed pantry.

It totally opens the downstairs.

my floors!

Meant to put these up earlier...because I'm doing some work myself to save money on my renovation I've been super busy...

Before - ugly stairs

After - shiny!

Before: floor in living room

After

Before - kitchen floor

After