This entry is part solicitation of your advice, and part test to see if Hubby is reading. But mostly, it’s an invitation for you, yes, you, to mythically spend my money.

We need a new roof. The present roof, it isn’t so much a roof as it is an overhang for the woodland village that has moved in under the eaves and scurries around at 3am. If it’s the woodland village that’s waking up my kids, this new roof can’t come soon enough.

We got the quote for said new roof from the contractor yesterday, and let’s just say, there were a LOT OF ZEROS OMG HOLY SHIT. We need the roof, we’re already adding on to the house, and comparatively it isn’t going to hurt too too much but OMG the ZEROS. ZEROS, they do indeed mean so much.

So here’s the part where you spend my money - virtually - and give me much needed advice. Our addition will include a powder room. We have yet to pick out the fixtures. As a general rule, I try to get Hubby gifts for birthdays and holidays that are either consumable or experiences to be enjoyed, and this would probably be a gift that would cover the next 2.3 years of gift giving: should I buy Hubby The Toto Neorest toilet, which, for approximately $5k, has a built-in bidet, air dryer and deoderizer, autoclean function, and a sensor that activates an automatic seat and flushing mechanism? There is no question that this is an obscene amount of money to drop (ha ha) on a toilet, but on the other hand, the roof is a FUCK of a lot more and that’s just going to bar entrance to woodland creatures. This cleans and air dries your ass.

What do you think? 

There is no wall in the kitchen, and while the addition is framed the only thing separating the house from the plywood structure is some insulation stuffed into the back wall which isn’t so much a wall but more of a used-to-be-a-wall.

Since the thermostat is a few feet away from that not-a-wall, it’s often very much affected by the cold since we got a shitfuckton of snow when the weather forecast called for hardly any.

So on the first floor, it’s cold. On the second floor, it’s very warm. And on the third floor, it’s Miami. In August. OMG. I think I got a tan just sitting up there for an hour. 

Came home yesterday to the following.

1. Pipes no longer frozen. Yay!
2. Contractor who had thoughtfully put a ton of insulation in the interior walls temporarily so we’d be warm and the pipes wouldn’t freeze. Yay!
3. No more countertop or cabinets on 3/4 of the kitchen wall. Yay!
4. No cooktop. Hmm.
5. Microwave shorting out the outlet in the dining room. Oh dear.
6. Dust everywhere. YUK.
7. Progress. Yay! Yay! Yay! 

Friday the contractor chipped away the stucco on the back wall of the house, and boarded up the naked insides of the back wall for the weekend. We cleared out the cabinets on that wall and began the setup of our temporary kitchen, which will reside on a wheeled cart, and which consists of the two most important parts of our kitchen: the microwave, and the coffeemaker.

It was cold as balls in the kitchen all weekend, and today we woke up to 10-degree temperatures and frozen pipes in the kitchen. That’s not good. We also have to keep an eye on the furnace, because the thermostat is close enough to the kitchen that it’ll run the heat all day and run down the water level in the boiler.

I keep telling myself, this is just the start of the “fun.”

Construction has started. WOOOO! According to Hubby, there’s a backhoe-y shovel-y kind of thing in our yard, and a bunch of trucks in the driveway. BRING IT ON.

Every time something was annoying with our kitchen this weekend, like things falling off the counter because it’s only 18” deep, or containers rolling around in the bottomless pit of my pantry, I would holler at our not-present contractor, “NEIL! GET ME A NEW KITCHEN!”

Neil, it seems, is here, and the new kitchen shall be kicking ass and taking names very very soon. I hope. If mother nature calms down with the wind storms and ice and crap. 

So today, Hubby, Baba O’Riley and I drove nearly 2 hours north to go shop for kitchen items. We walked into a huge warehouse of sample kitchen setups, only to find that what we had listed in our planners as a 10am appointment was marked in the sales rep’s calendar as 11. I am reasonably sure that Hubby didn’t goof on that one because 11 is around when Baba eats. No way we would schedule for a time when we would be distracted by chow time.

No matter - we ended up working with someone good, and what I thought would take for freaking ever was not difficult at all. We’d been thinking about the kitchen, what we wanted, the decisions we’ve made (or the contractor made, really. We picked out 3 elements of the previous house’s kitchen reno total) and features we’d love to have so when it came time to pick things, Hubby and I were in this weird sync. We’re never in sync. If Hubby isn’t arguing, well… let me put it this way. You know how sharks that stop swimming die? I think if Hubby isn’t arguing every statement made in his direction, his head explodes.

But here’s a sample of what it was like with Morag & Hubby (and Baba, who doesn’t talk) in the kitchen design showcase:

Becky: “Here are some samples of door styles available in the finishes that you like. We have this one… this one… this one....”
Morag: “No… no… no… that one.”
Hubby: “I agree. That’s perfect.”
*cue Morag and Hubby waiting for giant earth tremor*

Becky: “These are the countertop samples in the composite material you mentioned you liked.”
Morag: “There’s a grey I saw at another place - do you have it?”
Becky: “This one?”
Hubby: “Oh, man, I like that.”
Morag: “I figured you would.”
Becky *looking shocked* : “Ok. So we’re moving on to hardware.”

That was the part that Hubby wasn’t interested in - he fed Baba while I picked out hardware. In the end we picked out two sets - one very traditional and somewhat boring, and one that’s kinda funky and looks more like the stone-style counter top. We picked out backsplash subway tile (for some reason I love subway tile backsplashes) and some other items, discussed what kind of features we wanted inside the cabinets, and that was it.

Here, however, are some things we did not pick:

Farmer’s sinks. Also known as apron sinks, this would not be a good look for our house, especially in this area. Besides, we think it would look like our counter had buck teeth.

A tile mural backsplash for over the sink or behind the range. While we are doing a different tile, it’s not a picture of anything, like a rooster, or for God’s sake, a naked dripping emaciated woman.

Now, there were a few tile murals in the store - apparently they are VERY hot or something - and one of them was words. “Sage.” “Parsley.” And you guessed it, “Rosemary” and “Thyme.”

Now look. If there are going to be words on my backsplash, you can bet your left asscheek that two of them will be “Gin” and “Juice.” And possibly “Bitches.”

1. Carrie Underwood bugs the crap out of me. She sang the national anthem a few minutes ago, and I’d like a word with her stylist: the giant, giant wavy curl? Over it.

2. The National Anthem Yodel should be ILLEGAL. It’s as bothersome to me as when people cut up the American flag and use it to line a jacket (Bono are your ears burning?). I know I sound like a conservative gasbag, but whatever your feelings about the US, the flag was not meant to absorb armpit sweat from world-minded Irishmen.

Further, the national anthem does not feature a one-octave yodeling jump on the word “Free.” Quit showing off. It’s one note. One note. No need to over do it. And for God’s sake, stop with the jazz hands.

3. I have been looking for the faucet from our kitchen renovation in Jersey City. I loved it that much, I wanna use it again. I saw a picture of it on the Home Depot site, but I couldn’t find it for sale. Where did I find it? Faucets.com. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?