MelissaH

We actually started thinking about renovating a kitchen, oh, about seven or eight years ago. That was in the house we lived in before we moved here. That kitchen was a completely different shape, which presented completely different challenges. But we started talking about what we liked and didn't like, and what we wanted from a renovation, that long ago. Ultimately, we moved out before doing much work on that kitchen, but we were able to use quite a bit of that planning in the process of planning this kitchen. In retrospect, I'm very happy we spent so much time planning. We knew we'd be on a tight time budget, and by having most of the decisions made before we even started, we were able to get done ahead of schedule. That, having a handy husband, and not finding anything horrific enabled this project to proceed well. Yeah, stuff in the DW doesn't necessarily get completely dry. Especially things like the bottoms of mugs which have a bit of a lip so they hold water, or the lip of an upside-down Rubbermaid container. There's no dry cycle clearly marked on the Bosch, so what we've started doing is running it through its cycle last thing before we go to bed, and then in the morning popping it open slightly (and dumping out the bottoms of mugs, etc.) but not actually putting things away then. The bigger issue for us right now is the stuff that gets hand-washed: the good knives, the hand-blown glasses, the ice cream scoops. They sit out overnight, and when it's humid they don't get completely dry by morning. That happens sometimes in the summer, but more often in the winter when all the windows are closed and it's snowing a couple of inches every day. I guess we might have to start drying things by hand, if they don't get dry sitting out overnight. But I'm not complaining, as it beats washing everything by hand! Speaking of dry: I've been oiling butcher block like mad. For some reason, the two surfaces on either side of the range are drinking mineral oil like it's gone out of style. I'm completely out, and there are *still* sections that will easily take more oil in. Guess I need to go to the drugstore tomorrow and pick up another bottle. Last night, when I went to bed I left a thickish coating of oil on the butcher block. In the morning I found little oily kittyprints on the front of the range. And tonight, there was another hairball on the floor. Coincidence? Thanks! Most of the sweat and effort and work belongs to my husband, not to me. My part was really in the planning, but that was a joint effort too. Advice: Think carefully about whether a counter-depth fridge would make a difference to you. We don't have one, because two years ago you paid a huge premium to get counter-depth, but the only options available seemed to be side-by-side, which I don't like at all. Things have gotten a little better since then, but you still pay a premium for the counter-depth. And if you don't want side-by-side, you pretty much get stuck with french doors on a top fridge, which is nice but costs you even more. We love having the freezer on the bottom. It means that the fridge is on top, so there's no bending to get into the veggie drawers. However, with our narrow kitchen, the big door causes a little trouble, because it's so...urm...big. The designer's original plan called for the fridge to be right opposite the range, which wouldn't have worked because the door handle would have banged into the oven handle and we couldn't have opened the fridge. A french-door version would have solved the problem, but boy, they're pricey! We didn't care about having water in the door. It's not that big a deal for us. YMMV. One thing I'd definitely look at is the freezer door vs. drawer options available. I know Amana makes both, or at least they did at the time we were looking two years ago. We really like our drawer. I think you may lose a little bit of freezer space with the drawer, but it's really easy to get at. (We have friends with a bottom-freezer door.) Again, if you want a counter depth model, your choices will probably be limited. I'm about ready to put a Lyon on the wall sometimes, as I'm nearly positive he's the guilty party who knocked over a half-full water glass on the dining room table last night while we slept! (I think this because Leo spent most of the night on his pillow, which is on our bed.) Fortunately, most of the water soaked into a placemat and the tablecloth, and the table's finish wasn't damaged at all. We're apparently still in the new-surface-that-must-be-fully-explored phase, according to the cats. And the old dining room table and countertops being off limits apparently doesn't mean diddlysquat about the new dining room table and countertops! We're going to Syracuse tomorrow, to run errands. Among other things, we discovered a paint specifically designed to paint on glass. You paint it on, let it dry for 24 hours, put the glass item in a cold oven, slowly heat it up to 325 °F, and then turn the oven off and let the oven and item cool together. At the end of the cooling, the paint is baked onto the glass more or less permanently, and gives a stained-glass effect. We've found a Lion of Flanders emblem on line (the official version, black with white trim inside and red tongue and claws) that we were able to enlarge without destroying the resolution, and printed a tiled version that's nice and big. We're going to see if we can find some of the glass paint and test it out. If we like the effect, we'll be ordering a big sheet of glass from our local supplier, taping our lion emblem underneath, and painting on the glass. Also on our list: looking for 4 inch square bullnose tiles, to use in the backsplash. We're going to do 2-by-6 bullnose tiles for most of the backsplash. But we realized that the butcher block in the baking area is a smidge thicker than the laminate that butts up to it. If we used the same tile, straight as it comes, we'd wind up with a little bit of a bump that would look like a mistake. So we can either trim the bottom edge of the tiles that would form the backsplash over the butcher block to get a common tiletop height, or we can get a different tile entirely for that area, to make it look completely different and therefore not a mistake. We've opted for the larger tiles, but our Lowe's doesn't have them. Home Depot seems to have a better selection of tiles. If the HD glossy black doesn't match the Lowe's glossy black of our 2-by-6es, I'm lobbying for glossy red to match the lion's tongue and claws. I now have toekicks all the way around, and light valances everywhere except over the lights to the right of the baking area (which is hidden by the fridge anyway). Tomorrow I may get the last light valance, and we should also be able to mount the paper towel holder. I haven't had a paper towel holder since I moved away from home! (I'm so excited to have a home for my paper towels that's off the countertop!) What's left: backsplashes (as described above), threshold pieces for both floor transitions, and shelf for iPod. We've pretty much settled on the under-counter mounting system from iHome, but haven't ordered it yet. I'd like to have a subwoofer, but when I look for the one with the subwoofer that was supposed to be available on 1 July, nobody seems to have it and it's nowhere on the iHome Web site. I wonder if it got delayed. In any case, we can't put in the shelf until we know what's going on it, and we both like the idea of keeping the iPod safely out of harm's way. Time for me to go push oil around on the countertops, to move it from the areas that have apparently taken in all they can to the areas that need more. I'll be glad when that's all evened out. Must remember to get heavy cream. I have eggs already. I want to make that caramel ice cream recipe. (Two things to do on the new stove: make caramel and cook eggs for custard!) MelissaH

Lori, We started packing up stuff from the kitchen on 1 June. The dumpster came the next day. Before the end of the month, we were cooking in the new kitchen. That's about a month sooner than we'd originally figured! (We attribute the speed to three things: first, the lack of nasty surprises; second, the IKEA cabinets going together and in much more easily than we'd figured on; and finally, everything being delivered early so we didn't get stuck waiting. We had fish for dinner last night. Nothing too exciting: some tilapia filets from the freezer, defrosted and cooked in olive oil and butter. But the exciting part is that our vent hood works! Had I not known that we were cooking fish for dinner, I wouldn't have known at all! Hooray for hoods! As far as totally finished, we're still close. Other (work-related) projects have taken precedence over the last day or two, but maybe over the weekend we'll get nearer the end. I did buy a brand-new paintbrush today, which I'll dedicate to mineral oil for the butcher block sections of countertop. Tonight I plan to give both sections around the range their first coats of oil. If they suck all that in overnight, I'll do it again first thing when I wake up tomorrow, and then lightly sand them down just before dinner. My goal is to have the countertops totally ready to go before the weekend, so I can crank out some fresh pasta for the first time since forever. Tonight is market night. It's a beautiful day today, sunny with light breeze and temps in the low 70s, so it will be a wonderful market night. I'm hoping to find some good pie filling material, but I think it still might be a little early. MelissaH

Your bread looks beautiful! Did you bake it right in these pans, or is there something special in the bottoms? I applaud your local efforts. Have you been tracking your mileage for the week at all, so you can compare it to a week when you aren't going out of your way? I'm intrigued by the concept of eating locally. Unfortunately, since I'm not a farmer or other person with large cellar and silo and other storage facilities, other than in the summer I don't think it would work so well in a small town in upstate NY. MelissaH

All the really big stuff is now done, unless you count backsplash and toekicks as big. Painting the dining room wall and ceiling was a group effort. My husband and cousin put the first coat of paint on the wall: (see, they have faces!) And then I finished up the task. Once the paint had dried and we removed all the blue tape from the fan and the ceiling, we brought up the dining room table. It's a perfect fit for the space, looks good with the cabinets, and is a huge improvement over our previous table. The new chairs also work well, and the new fan looks terrific with everything. I'm thrilled and delighted with the improved dining room, as well as the new kitchen. (Yup, that's the same old molding around the door. We might replace it when we build the box around the former baseboard heater pipe.) The changes are getting smaller and smaller, harder to see unless someone points them out. Probably the biggest thing in this picture is that the under-cabinet fluorescent lights are installed, as are the valances to hide the lights themselves. There's stuff in the cabinets (and I like how the textured glass doors hide any messiness inside) and stuff on the countertops. (The wine bottle is Ravenswood Zin, Vintner's Blend 2004, IIRC.) We've even got some of the decorative stuff up. The towel is what we've been using to dry the stuff that gets hand-washed. We need to find a better solution for that. The window molding (and painting the quarter-round trim with three coats of shiny paint, same color as the ceiling) really finished off that area. The hood vent is also in. That took a bit of doing, and we wound up with a cap and flange that will need to be painted so they don't corrode. But the ventilation system works, well enough that after cooking shrimp and scallops indoors, there was virtually no trace left behind. It took a bit of doing to get the vent cover installed, because the only way to attach the cover to the hood is to basically sit on the stove and reach up. I didn't take any pictures of that. We also don't really have a great place to keep the giant roll of plastic wrap, which we acquired in the process of packing everything up to move here three years ago. Sooner or later we'll use it all up, and go back to normal-sized rolls of the stuff that fit nicely in a drawer with the aluminum foil and baking parchment and ziplock bags. I've used the oven AND the baking area now. We had cherries and blueberries to use up, and I have a dishwasher to clean the food processor after I use it. So I pitted the cherries, and kludged a pie together. I started the night before, oiling the butcher block with a thick coat of mineral oil. In the morning, I wiped off the oil that hadn't soaked in, and realized that it really could use a light sanding. So I hauled out the old pastry board, and rolled my dough on that. (I'll be sanding after dinner tonight, so next time I can use the butcher block for its intended purpose.) The filling turned out well, but the crust wound up a bit tougher than I would like. I think that's because I used the food processor to mix in the water, which I almost never do, so next time I'll go back to folding in the liquid by hand. But I did weave a beautiful lattice top, that would have been even prettier had I remembered to brush it with something and then sprinkle it with a touch of sugar to make it sparkle and shine. Oh well, it still nicely showed off the cherry-berry filling inside. I've also now sacrificed the first bit of skin to the kitchen god: I touched the oven rack with my bare wrist. I got ice on it right away, though, and it didn't even blister. (Note to self: if someone asks what we need for the kitchen, tell them some nice LONG oven mitts! Kitchen god and construction god are two different things, and the construction god got many blood sacrifices in the course of building the kitchen.) I tested out the convection function of the oven with the pie. Don't know what difference that may have made. The towels hanging from the oven door were a gift from our friend Bruce. The ceiling and walls have been patched and touched up now. All that remains is some of the light valances and the aforementioned toekick and backsplash work. Today's purchases included some boards to make threshold pieces, for the doorway and the transition to the dining room carpet. (No sense in going through a lot of effort for those, because the carpet will be GONE within a couple of years at most, and when we put hardwood in, we'll need to redo those transitions anyway.) Random thoughts: *I'm definitely seeing good reasons to keep the fridge door as it is, not reversing it. If I'm in the baking area working, someone else can get into the fridge without disturbing me! *Lyon tried to go under the cabinets yesterday. He stuck his head underneath, looked around, and then decided that he really didn't want to go there. Toekicks are definitely a good idea in our kitchen. *When I oiled the butcher block and left it to absorb overnight, someone went exploring. I found oily pawprints on the laminate countertop next to the butcher block the next morning. Don't know if it's related to the 5 AM hairball. <yuk!> *I should remember to pick up a brand-new paintbrush to oil the two other sections of butcher block. It should be easier than wiping oil on with a washcloth, won't get my hands as gunked up as the washcloth, and probably (I hope) won't leave behind as much lint. *This kitchen is amazing, because it lets us do things we like, that never would have been possible before. Even stupid things like someone doing dishes (meaning, "someone loading the dishwasher") and another person prepping food. *We like being able to seat as many people as we could ever want around the table. *The cats have taken a liking to our new red IKEA chairs. We need to get a lint brush to keep nearby. *I should really make some Korova Cookies in the very near future. And something with salty caramel, since I have such an embarrassment of wonderful French salts. Maybe some caramel ice cream, to go with Korova Cookies? There was a recipe in the new Gourmet magazine that looked promising. There are four freezer canisters in the deep freeze, just waiting for me. *I should start thinking of things to feed our friends for when we hold the Kitchen-Viewing Party. The tapas book by Jose Andres will probably have some good ideas...like the potato chip tortilla. Should test that out. *This must mean life is getting back to normal, WRT kitchen matters, because I'm spending more time actually planning things to cook rather than making building decisions or daydreaming about impossibilities. MelissaH

Wow, thanks for your responses, everyone. I'm now really curious to at least find pandan leaves, to stick my nose in them and smell them. We have a small Asian grocer in town here, run by people who are (I think) Filipino. If they don't have a clue what I'm talking about, we have larger Asian stores in Syracuse. Do Filipinos use pandan leaves and/or palm sugar? Ottawa's not far, but something tells me I'd have a problem getting fresh leaves of any kind across the border. MelissaH

Oh! I forgot to mention: We tested out the oven last night. At the supermarket yesterday, we got the parts for my favorite initial oven test: two cans of "whomp" biscuits. I followed the directions on the can, and the biscuits were done right in the middle of the time range given in the instructions, which means that my oven's thermostat is pretty darned accurate. Furthermore, the biscuits browned evenly, which means that the oven is also pretty even-heating. The second can of biscuits is waiting in the fridge still, since as it turned out we didn't need to adjust anything and try again. We ate the resulting biscuitoids with local strawberries, macerated in a touch of sugar while we ate dinner, and ice cream. Yum. Watch out, butter cake recipe! MelissaH

Wow, things got ahead of me in a hurry! I meant to get back to this a lot sooner, but it obviously didn't happen. As I'd said, we have cooked our first dinner entirely in the new kitchen. (And since then, we've cooked a few other dinners partly upstairs, since it's gotten nice enough to use the grill again the last couple of evenings.) We don't yet have a hood that actually vents outside. Until we have a hood that actually sucks dirty air somewhere, we can't do anything too noxious. But it's coming. Wednesday afternoon (that was the 28th) the stainless steel was delivered to our HVAC roofer guy, and then he needed to make the sheet of metal into the ducts and various other pieces. The original plan was for him to come on Friday and do the work (yesterday, that is) but the rain we've had backed things up enough that all he could do was come over quickly and get up on the roof. Because of the way the roof extends over the back deck, we actually have two different pitches of roof on the backside of the house. Depending on exactly where the stove is in relation to the roof, we may or may not be able to go straight up the way we want. But we do have options, and because we have lots of extra wiggle room in terms of the amount of ductwork we can use, we'll be able to find a viable workaround, even if it involves coming out somewhere other than straight up. He'll be over Monday morning, and the kitchen may actually be done that day, completely! (Did I just lay a curse on the kitchen? I hope not!) The moldings, filler strips, and end panels are all in place! The story of our first dinner: nothing too exciting, just a bag of cheese ravioli from the freezer with what was left of a jar of sauce, and a loaf of store-bought garlic bread. Whatever salad fixings had been left over in both our kitchens. We'd been working and running around (three of us individually: me, my husband, and our friend Anne) enough that nobody wanted to take the time to do anything much or that would involve massive prep work or time. Hence our meal selection. (Dessert was good, though: the last of the blueberry pie.) The stove heats water beautifully. We didn't do the scientific experiment of measuring the amount and temperature of the water in the pasta pot, and starting the stopwatch the moment the burner ignited, to see how long it takes our stove to boil water, but it was fast enough that nobody complained. But what really impressed us: the simmer setting of our burners. Our friends' Viking simmers with what seems to be little spurts of flame, but this baby has a very very very low, but constant flame. (Part of the difference may be because our friends run on propane, but we use natural gas.) The neatest part was that we could actually get the flame so low that the sauce heated but didn't bubble or blurple everywhere, for once. Casey at the stove, before the burning The stove without Casey But then, the part about our first burning. I hope that our non-ceremonial burning was enough to satisfy our kitchen gods for a good long time. It happened to the garlic bread. The instructions say to bake for a while, as a whole closed-up loaf, and then open the loaf up and stick it under the broiler for a bit to crisp the top. (You can probably all see where the train wreck's coming from.) We baked as directed, and then switched from bake to broil. On our range, this entails pushing the "broil" button and turning the knob all the way past 500 to "broil." Casey did this, and a couple of minutes later checked the bread. Nothing seemed to be happening. Another couple of minutes, another check, still nothing. We thought maybe it was too far from the broiler---the one knock we'd heard about this particular range was that the broiler might be a little wimpy, compared to some others---so we rested the bread on top and moved a rack up right to the top. Still, after a couple of minutes, nothing. Then, I asked whether the oven lights were on. There are lights on each dial which switch on when the burner or oven is turned on, and there's also a light that turns on when the oven is heating. And lo and behold, the oven lights were off. The knob has a little bit of a click at broil, and my husband had gone past it a smidge. (The only thing past broil is clean.) He turned the oven knob to where it clicked into broil, and you know the part that comes next. Three minutes later, we had a loaf of garlic bread nicely charred at both ends. We cut the ends off, and ate the rest with our dinner. Casey at the sink That night we ran the dishwasher for the first time. I like that we have a display that tells you how many minutes are left in the cycle. We can barely hear it at all when it's on, which is nice. I also like that it's easy to load, and holds lots and lots of dishes, and cleans them well. We discovered that our two largest plastic cutting boards really don't fit in well with the top rack in place, so unless we have lots of tall stuff to do, we'll continue to wash those by hand. But even that's not such a big deal anymore, because we have a beautiful huge sink that can hold even our largest cutting board flat so it's easy to wash. There were a few other things that don't go in the dishwasher, so I also did those by hand, and just spread them all to dry on a kitchen towel on the counter. In the morning, I just had to put them away and hang the towel back through the fridge handle, and that was easy. Back to the dishwasher: in the morning, things were a touch damp still, so I guess the drying cycle isn't quite as efficient as leaving things on a drying rack overnight in the breeze. But I can live with that. I like having my dishes in a drawer right next to the dishwasher. It's very easy to load and unload. The sink (and the glass-front horizontal cabinets) without Casey Thursday we spent the day, more or less, in Syracuse. We didn't get anything too big or wild, with the exception of my 20-year-old cousin. We did get a tone generator to help sort out the electrical messes, as well as to ease any future electrical work. We found some containers to help organize the stuff in our new drawers. On the way back into town we stopped at our farmer's market and got a couple of tomatoes and some potatoes. The tomatoes were for the burgers we grilled for dinner that night. The potatoes we did inside, salt potato style. We also threw some corn on the grill. My cousin was rather appalled to learn that in this country, store-bought ground beef needs to be cooked until it's completely dead. After dinner, we loaded the dishwasher again, added some other stuff from downstairs, and ran it. My jet-lagged cousin headed to bed, and we finished dealing with the last of the electrical issues. The hallway light turned out to be easy: in the process of running a new wire from Point A to Point B, because the old one was so old that much of the cloth insulation had crumbled away, my husband hadn't realized that the wire was supposed to go into and out of a junction box under a sheet of plywood. That was easy to rectify. The ceiling fan was a bit tougher, and we still don't know exactly what's going on with it. By bedtime on Thursday, that wasn't sorted out, but playing with power is not a good thing to do with a tired mind. So, to bed we went. Friday morning, first thing to do was to fix the power. With a clear mind, my husband realized that it doesn't really matter if he understands what's going on, so long as all the wires are capped off properly and the switch associated with the fixture turns it on in one position and off in the other. Furthermore, even having a working switch isn't all that important, because the new fan operates by remote control, so as long as it has power, it's fine. In the end, we determined that the fan and switch function, so that's how it currently stands. With that sorted out, my husband replaced the old ceiling fan with the Avian model from Lowe's. It's got three wide blades, one halogen light, and is much more visually appealing and up-to-date than its predecessor, especially combined with the new cabinets. It also moves a ton more air, enough that the burners on the stove flicker a bit on the simmer setting. The other thing we did yesterday was start to put things into our new cabinets. That meant that we had to put shelves in. I started with the spices, which went on a couple of sets of "steps" in the 12-inch cabinets over the baking area. I also put in things like the extracts and citrus oils, the honeys, the salts and mustards (we got a wonderful collection of sea salts, mustards, and peppercorns from France, courtesy of my cousin) here. I'm fully expecting to do at least one more full-scale reorganization once we've used the new kitchen for a while. The corner cabinet next to the fridge is where the small electrical appliances live: hand mixer, immersion blender and normal blender, electric frying pan, waffle iron, crockpot, and the like. Casserole dishes also wound up here. The turntables make it really easy to get at everything. The other corner cabinet will hold flour, sugar, and other powdered baking supplies. We have upper turntable cabinets too, but I don't remember off the top of my head what we were going to put here. We looked back at our original list of what we had, and at the diagram of the kitchen where I'd indicated what should go where in the new kitchen, but we left it on the countertop when the cat was still interested in the brand-new countertops, and he obviously found it because one day I came home to discover a giant hairball spewed on top of it. Yuck. We'd thought the toaster oven would go on the counter next to the fridge, so that's where we put it. It seemed fine, except that it was slightly in the way of the switch that will eventually control the undercabinet lights for that area. I still think it will be fine there, but sometime before I woke up today, the toaster migrated back to the other side of the kitchen, between dining room and sink. I think I'll move it back. We've decided for now to keep the hinges of the fridge as is. For one thing, it's pretty easy to use the countertop opposite the fridge as a loading zone. And for another thing, you don't get boxed into the corner when you open the fridge. If we decide it needs to be switched, that can happen later. This morning, my husband and cousin put one coat of paint on the dining room wall, around the slider that leads out to the deck. Then they went over to Anne's, to install her dishwasher. (It's only been sitting in her kitchen for a year now, because she couldn't decide which cabinet to replace with it.) She has the luxury of an open basement, which makes it much easier to deal with utilities than in our house. I put one coat of paint on the ceiling, and then I put the second coat of paint on the wall. I just now put the second coat of paint on the ceiling. That pretty much used up the ceiling paint, but we'll need to get some more because we have areas around the lights that need a little touching up. We'll do that next time we're out east. The view from the dining room. Things are still a bit of a mess, but they're getting better. So, what's next? First, Anne needs to have a functioning dishwasher. That should happen before the end of the day. She and her mom are joining us for dinner tomorrow, which is why we wanted to get the dining room painted today. We also have some little stuff that will need to migrate elsewhere. Once the paint is dry to the touch and I'm sure we have enough coats on the ceiling, and everything else is cleared out of the dining room, we'll be relocating into the dining room table my parents didn't want to move to Colorado. It's been in our garage the last month and a half. This is a beautiful oak table, 40 inches wide and about 74 inches long. There are two leaves, each of which adds 19 inches to the table's length. Now we also need to get a tablecloth to fit, before dinner tomorrow. We also need to talk with our next-door neighbor, the retired art professor. He's probably going to have some good ideas for how to best transfer our Lion of Flanders onto the wall. (Right now, we have a computer printout taped up with blue tape.) Once the lion is up, we'll know exactly where we can put the shelves. Once we figure out exactly what iPod dock we're getting, we'll know how many shelves we can get up. We're thinking a clock would also be nice. We still have to do the toekicks, which means we need to make sure all the junk is cleaned out from underneath. I see a Swiffer in our future, maybe. There's also a little bit of drywall patching to do still, as well as light valances and under-cabinet lighting. And the tile backsplash. And oiling the butcher block sections of countertop, but that needs to wait until all the other stuff is moved off. And.... But it's mainly little stuff now. The kitchen should be fully functional by Monday night! MelissaH

Enlighten me: what's a pandan leaf? Does it provide flavor, structure, or both? What do they look like, and do I have any hope of finding them in the US? MelissaH

Pictures and details to follow, later today I hope. The end is in sight. My husband is currently in the attic, following wires so we can have a functioning light in the hallway again, and also a ceiling fan (with light) that works as well. (It's not super-warm for the moment: the Lyon Thermometer says loosely curled up, with head over tail.) But: momentous occasion last night: we cooked our first meal in the new kitchen, and then ran a load of dishes in the dishwasher for the first time! (Slightly less momentous occasion: we burned something in the oven for the first time also. But we'll forget about that.) We've been spared the worst of the rain, unlike what's apparently south and east of us. However, it was thundery and rainy enough last night that I was relieved I didn't have to go outdoors to make dinner. In a couple of hours, we'll head to Syracuse to run a whole bunch of errands, including visits to Target and Home Depot. Then we'll stop at the airport to pick up my cousin, who arrives from Paris to do an internship in the chemistry department here. (Dinner plans for tonight include the all-American burgers on the grill.) In the meantime, I need to finish clearing stuff out of the room that will be his for the next six weeks. Hope Lyon doesn't mind sharing the bed for a while! We've started putting stuff into drawers. This is harder than I thought, trying to figure out what should go where, knowing that once something goes somewhere it probably won't get moved for quite a while. We're hoping that Target (or Home Depot) has better options for drawer organization than Lowe's and BB&B did locally. We're also looking for a new stepstool, so I can reach the upper portions of our beautiful TALL cabinets. My husband is wonderful! MelissaH

In various restaurants and cookbooks, I've also seen the dish's name spelled as lard na, lad na, rad na, and other variations. I'm guessing it's a transliteration thing, like going from Yiddish to English. Around here, it's always got lots and lots of broccoli to go with the wide rice noodles and brown "gravy." Your choice of beef, chicken, pork, tofu, shrimp.... MelissaH

Frozen Berry Report: Yesterday, we provided most of the dessert to go with dinner, chez our friend Anne. Anne made and baked me a pie crust, because right now if I tried to roll one, I'd be using sawdust to keep it from sticking, in my kitchen-under-construction. I made the filling outside on the propane stove, and just kept it in the pot for about an hour until we got to Anne's, at which point I scraped it into the baked shell and popped it into the fridge until we were ready for dessert. I followed your recipe except for two things: I used the unmeasured juice of one lemon, squeezed with a lemon squeezer; and I used frozen blueberries, which we picked ourselves and then froze in a single layer on sheet pans before bagging. It tasted delicious. You could taste some contrast between the cooked and uncooked berries. The texture contrast wasn't quite what it probably would have been with unadulterated berries, but the effect was still quite acceptable. There was a minor problem with the berries running out of the crust, once the pie was cut. I attribute this to my monkeying with the filling after it cooled to get it into the crust, disturbing the set from the cornstarch. I suspect that if I'd filled the pie without delay, it wouldn't have been a problem. Interestingly enough, I found a very similar recipe in Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte, called a Double-Good Blueberry Pie. That recipe says it's OK to use frozen blueberries you picked and froze yourself, adds an extra tablespoon of butter to the berries, and includes a cream cheese layer (unbaked) under the blueberries. I'd call the recipe a decent one to use with decent frozen blueberries, especially if you are in an ovenless situation. Respectfully submitted, MelissaH

We did our day trip to Ottawa today, and got a whole bunch of little stuff (trash cans for under the new sink, a pullout rack for the cleaning stuff under the sink on the other side, a cat food holder, a magnetic metal bar to hold up recipes, drawer dividers, etc. The trip itself was uneventful. We did stumble upon a couple of bonanzas in the As Is section. We found another horizontal cabinet door, for CDN $5. We also found two drawers, no fronts (but those can easily be constructed in our color out of birch plywood if necessary) for CDN $5 each. My husband just glued the countertops together with epoxy. I can't do that, because I'm allergic to one of the ingredients in the uncured resin. Here's what it looked like last night, with the plumbing all done and the bucket below DRY: The epoxy will be cured tomorrow morning. Then, the trim work really begins. MelissaH

Grrr. The sink hole is cut in the countertop. The sink fits beautifully in the hole. (We also had to trim the top rail of the sink cabinet slightly, so the sink would fit in.) And then my husband looked at the pieces to attach the sink to the countertop. The screws that came with the clips are designed to work only with 0.75-inch countertop. Our countertop is 1.5 inches thick. The clips don't work with the countertop. Why don't they tell you these things when you order? (This was an order I placed over the phone! All it would have taken is a "How thick is your countertop?" from the person on the other end of the line?) Who knows how long it could take to get in the "real" replacements! A workaround with readily-available materials is coming...I hope. MelissaH

No question from the beginning: we wanted gas burners and an electric convection oven. I'll pick up the decision process after we finished agonizing over cooktop and separate oven vs. range, and 30-inch range vs. 36-inch range. Once we'd decided that we were going to do a 36-inch range (which pretty much put us down the pro-style path, as there doesn't seem to be a 36-inch consumer-style range in existence) we started looking at our options. We restricted ourselves to things available in stores within about an hour's drive. This was not so much because we wanted to buy locally (which, as it turned out, we didn't, because the price tag for purchase and delivery would have been a couple thousand higher to go more local) but because we wanted to be sure there was going to be someone around who could service the range, should the need arise. Then, once we knew what stores carried the higher-end appliances here, we visited them to see what the people were like. And we didn't like the people in the Syracuse stores: in every single one of them, the people either didn't call us back when I phoned to ask a question, ignored us completely when we showed up, or were incapable of giving coherent information when we tracked someone down. We therefore decided that we'd be going with something that the store in Auburn carried, which gave us five options: Monogram, Viking, Wolf, DCS, and Thermador (if I remember correctly). We spent quite a while in that store, where the salesperson talked to us as soon as we entered, answered our few questions, and then left us to play in peace. We ruled out Thermador right away, because we thought it ugly and because that giant oven temperature dial looks, to me, like something else that periodically needs to be tweaked or calibrated to stay in sync with the oven dial. We also ruled out Wolf, both because we'd heard that they weren't as reliable as others and because we wanted all 6 burners to be high-powered as long as we were going the pro-style route, and according to the specs, the Wolf has wimpy burners. We liked the way the DCS looked, but the floor model at the store had a broken door. Cross them off the list! So, this left us with Monogram and Viking, which were the two at the top of our list even before we started to look at everything. We have friends with a six-burner Viking rangetop, and it is an absolute joy to cook on (especially to us, since last time we visited them, we were still saddled with the old electric cooktop). We also liked that Viking is available in something other than a stainless finish. (Stainless is nice, but we were both concerned about having what appears to be a giant hunk of metal in a relatively small kitchen.) Our friends' rangetop has been fine, in terms of reliability, but we weren't sure about getting someone to our small town if something came up here. (Our friends got their rangetop the year before Viking came out with sealed burners. They said that given a choice, it's a no-brainer: sealed burners are the way to go.) In Monogram's favor, it's a GE, which means that it should be relatively easy to get it serviced, should the need arise. I also liked the wok holders on the flip side, since I realized long ago that many of the things I keep on dreaming about cooking someday are things where a component gets fried in oil, but could be done in relatively little oil if I used a wok. (My husband just discovered the wok holders when I showed him a couple of days ago!) We liked the look and feel of the range. The deciding factor? In the end, it all came down to price. When we looked at comparable Monogram and Viking models side by side, with price tags, the Viking was over a grand more expensive. Therefore, Monogram it is. You didn't ask, but I'll also tell you about how we chose the hood. Once we settled on a Monogram range, we wanted either a Monogram hood, or a hood made by someone who doesn't make ranges. The other big thing we wanted: filters that go in the dishwasher. Again, we looked for things available locally. My husband didn't like Vent-a-Hood when we saw one in person, so it was going to be something by Monogram. We narrowed down to two choices: the Straight Side Professional Wall-Mounted Hood or the Restaurant Style Professional Wall-Mounted Hood. (They make a taper-sided hood also, but because it was going between wall cabinets, we wanted the straight sides. They also make all kinds of more decorative hoods, but they either don't suck as much air or have a second blower and are therefore more complicated. Anything "pretty" or "architectural" would get lost in our kitchen, because the hood will be largely invisible from the dining room, unless Superman comes over for dinner and sees through the cabinet.) Functionally, the two are about the same, and we think they use the same motor. We went with the Restaurant Style hood for one reason: cost. The Restaurant Style hood comes with a stainless backsplash that works for us, but the Straight Side hood does not come with a backsplash (and buying one adds on a few hundred dollars to the cost). Had we not been satisfied with a plain stainless backsplash, we might have gone the other way. Speaking of hood: we heard from the roofer duct guy. The stainless he needs to build our ducting didn't get delivered last week. He's expecting it to arrive on Wednesday, so we'll probably see him towards the end of the week. I may very well have countertops (at least the laminate ones) and a working sink by the end of today! MelissaH edited because my brain got ahead of my fingers

Just need to say: That is the most beautiful zucchini picture I've ever seen. I wish we could get some like that here! MelissaH

The plumbing went relatively well. Only one slightly burned finger from a drop of hot solder, and no obvious leaks. We wound up reusing the old trap, because we inadvertently got one the wrong size. But we'll need to go back anyway, to get paint (we decided on Betsy's Linen for the window quarter-round, in something really shiny; I hope they sell samples because that's about all we'd need for the job) and I'm sure other things will come up also. An oddity did come up today: how to get the back on the sink cabinet. The drain comes out of the wall, but the water lines rise up from the floor. If we put the back on the cabinet before pushing it into place, the drain could come through but the water lines would be stuck outside the cabinet. And we couldn't really push the cabinet in place and then slide the back on from the outside because there's a wall there! What wound up happening: my husband cut a slot for the drainpipe, and slid the back over the drain but behind the water lines. Then he pushed the sink cabinet up to the wall, and somehow managed to push (pull?) the back to a reasonably tight compression fit. Then, he used the screws that hold the cabinet to the wall to help hold the backing on. But it's mainly just a compression fit. Here's the result, without sink cabinet doors: This afternoon after the plumbing, we leveled the cabinets from the refrigerator around past the sink to the sliding door, using the legs. Those corner cabinets are a real bugger to do, especially the legs at the back where they're nearly impossible to reach from the front. Up now: countertop cutting. Jigsaw and lots of blue tape...but we hedged our bets at Lowe's this morning with a tube of formica filler, which works wonders on small chips. We're currently in discussion about backsplash. I want to wrap it all the way around the baking area, across the butcher block counter. My husband doesn't. I think it will look funny if there's a black line that goes partway over, and then just stops. He thinks that if we replace that section of butcher block with marble earlier than we redo the entire countertop, we'll have problems with the backsplash being there and we'll make a mess trying to remove the tiles. The current compromise is that once the countertops are all in, we'll try it out and see if it really does look odd. Our next-door neighbor was over today. He's a retired art professor, and he was quite impressed by the kitchen. He said his wife's going to be jealous, especially of the range. MelissaH

OK, time to cue up the Sweeney Todd soundtrack? (all together now: "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd....") MelissaH

What about white chocolate balloon-formed cups, to go with the mango sorbet? I'd think that might work better than chocolate-chocolate. MelissaH

He's really pretty easy to keep happy. I just try to stay out of the way, and make sure dinner's good. Today's morning excursion took us to Lowe's, where we got a bunch of plumbing materials to make the connection from the sink (and garbage disposal) to the existing drain and water lines. We also got some other random pieces for electrical stuff, the tiles and grout for the backsplash, and a new ceiling fan (as long as my husband's going to be heading back to the attic to trace that wiring anyway, we figured we might as well replace it with something we like better). If the plumbing goes without any real problems, I may have a sink in by the end of the weekend! MelissaH

Here are today's pictures. It's really looking like a kitchen now! Here's standing in the dining room end of the kitchen, looking toward the baking area. You can see the recessed can lights on, as well as the triplet UFOs over the window. The gaps between the cabinets will all be filled when we bolt everything together. As you can see, the cabinets are all put together, but the pulls aren't on yet. The dishwasher's in place, so we know how things will fit in. And we brought up two big pieces of laminate countertop to see how they'd fit, and determine where to put the two seams we'll need. My husband read through the dishwasher installation instructions last night. They recommend putting some insulation and vapor barrier between the top of the DW and the bottom of the countertop directly over. We have a piece of floor underlayment that should fit both counts nicely. We'll also add some support bracing to the area over the DW, to help support countertop. I still can't believe how much light we have in the kitchen. This picture was taken at about 9 PM! Here's a slightly wider view of the same thing. It's a little hard to tell, but the backsplash is in place between range and hood, and the warming shelf and tool hanger rods are installed on the hood. Before we did that, our friend Jeff came over to help give us a little extra oomph to pull the range out so we could leak-test the gas line (and then to push it back against the wall) and to haul the countertop up. While he was here, he helped scoot the fridge over closer to the door so we gained a little more breathing room in our tight corner. When we moved the fridge closer to the door, we realized that not only is the ceiling not level, the doorway isn't square either. Oh well, I guess we all sag a little bit after 40+ years. (And I can say this even though I myself am not yet there. ) We don't know what we'll hang from the hood yet. One idea that crossed my mind: you know how, in appliance stores, they tie plastic fringe to their fans so you can see the fringe blow when the fans are on? We could do something similar, and watch the fringe get sucked into the hood. Or maybe not. In this picture, you can also see a piece of butcher block over by the range. There will eventually be butcher block in this location, so we can take stuff off the stove and not have to worry much about it. If you think you see an uncovered junction box in this photo, you're right. That's for the phone line, which we never bothered to get turned on since we just use our cell phones for everything. We didn't want to completely hide it, but we need to get a white box cover for it, next time we go out. Here's the tight back corner, looking around to the window and sink. The sink cabinet doesn't have a front or back yet. The front's not on because it will be much easier to deal with plumbing without the front in place. The back's not on yet for much the same reason. We know what we'll need to do with the plumbing: basically close off or remove one arm of a Y. We think it will be easier to close off the one arm, simply because the tail of the Y extends very close to the wall, where a mistake could have grave consequences and require tearing out a large portion of wall. So we're planning to take the easier way out, and just cap off the arm we don't need. (That will also allow us to leave open the option for going back to a double-bowl sink in the future, should we decide we don't like having one large single bowl.) But as long as the Y is in place, for us to put the back on the cabinet and then slide it up against the wall, we'd need to cut a large hole in the backing. Better to wait until the plumbing's modified, at which point we'll only need to make a small hole to allow the pipes into the cabinet. (We'll be putting a garbage disposal in.) My husband did notch out the bottom to let the water lines up. We'll have some water line work to do, as well as the drain line work. For one thing, the incoming hot water pipe's quite a bit taller than the cold water pipe. We plan to shorten it (and then just use a longer flex-line to make the connection to the faucet). For another thing, we'll need to add a T to the hot water line, for the dishwasher. That's another reason to shorten the hot water line: so we have more room for the T. What this all means is that the next thing we need to do is get the plumbing worked out, so we can at least put the back of the sink cabinet on, and cut the drain hole, and then tie it all together. Once everything's tied together and to the wall, we'll also need to cut a hole through the sidewall of the sink cabinet, for the DW drain hose. That shouldn't be a problem. Something that's not entirely clear from any of tonight's pictures is what we think we'll do with the countertop seams. The laminate countertop came in 8-foot lengths. We're only a few inches too long to be able to use only two lengths to do the entire run on the window side of the kitchen, unfortunately. This means we'll need to do two seams, not one. Our plan is to put the seams on either side of the sink, over the gaps that will be covered with filler strips eventually, symmetric with respect to the sink. That way we'll have plenty of room to glue or bolt or whatever the sections of countertop together, and it shouldn't look too weird. Here's the range, standing slightly back into the closed end of the kitchen. These cabinet areas will all get butcher block countertop. We measured today to be sure that the counter height would be at or below the level of the range. Speaking of the range, once we'd leak-checked the gas line and then pushed everything back into place, we turned it on! It took a little while for the air to get pushed out of the lines, but once that happened, all six burners lit and burned beautifully. The simmer setting looks tremendously low, especially after recent fights with the outdoor propane stove setup. Jeff was particularly impressed with the Monogram burner grates---all six reverse to a curved surface designed to cradle a wok. He wondered if they were available to retrofit to other stoves. We don't think they are, unfortunately. I can see that we'll need to figure out how to best remove fingerprints from stainless. Down at the far end next to the range, there's another cabinet that doesn't have a front. This is on purpose, because the microwave will live inside. My husband still has a little work to do on the cabinet, to figure out how to best support the microwave, and make the leftover space useful (and possibly even covered). The microwave will be down close to the dining room, and close to where the cats are fed. Here's what's between the sink and the dining area. The horizontal cabinets have a glass shelf inside, and we chose the glass doors. We think our glasses will be stored in these, and we'll find something pretty to go up top in the open area. These cabinets only came in white frames, but we'll put a birch end panel outside all the way up. We're currently debating whether these horizontal doors need one or two handles. My husband's initial thought was one, but to me they're long enough that two hands feels more natural. Maybe that's just because I'm short. We also need to figure out whether 30-inch drawers get two handles, or just one. I vote for two, again. We calculated this all out at one point, so I should go look at the numbers. And finally, here are the three UFOs, turned on and reflected in the window. We plan to trim out the window with molding, and also probably to repaint the tan with either Betsy's Linen white (to match the ceiling) or Cream Cake yellow (to match the wall) in something glossy. We're actually getting to the point where apart from the plumbing and the vent duct, the work yet to be completed is largely cosmetic! I didn't expect to be this far for at least a few weeks yet, maybe even a month. We'll need to do all the toekicks and endpanels. We still need to futz with base cabinet legs (to make the top surfaces level for the countertop) and drawers (so things slide smoothly). We have zillions of knobs to attach to doors and drawers. We plan to make the top of the sink cabinet a tip-out, rather than just a dummy panel, so we need to get the hardware for that and install it. We also have molding to work with, and that's going to take a bit of time given our unlevel ceiling. The countertops and sink need to go in, as does the 2-by-6 tile backsplash we've chosen, but that's a bit off yet. And thresholds for both the dining room and side door. Lots of stuff to do, but most of it's little. The kitchen's starting to feel semi-functional. Now that the backsplash is in place, I could actually use the range if I wanted. (I'm hoping the weather stays good at least till the roofer duct guy comes to make the hood vent outside.) Having the countertop pieces laid on top goes a long way towards a feeling of functionality, I think. We determined today that the drawer dividers my husband got in Burlington, ON, as he drove back from Michigan last month are definitely the wrong size. Since they came from a Canadian IKEA store, they need to be exchanged at a Canadian store. This isn't a problem for us, as many Canadian stores are closer than New Haven, the nearest location in this country. We could certainly go back to Burlington, but the border crossings in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls area are generally nightmarish (last time: 2+ hours waiting, although the sign said only half an hour; in 2 hours, it's almost as efficient to go through Toronto around the north side of Lake Ontario and come in from the north!) trying to get back into this country. We're going to be better off visiting Ottawa. So we're planning a trip next week, to do the exchange and figure out what else we need (possibly a new silverware holder; definitely a paper towel holder). Guess we should probably count door pulls carefully, to see if we need to get more. Tonight I cooked downstairs, but we prepped dessert up in the kitchen! For dinner, I started by cutting the backbone out of the chicken with my shears, and then flipped the bird over and pushed down on the breastbone to flatten it. I tucked the wings in behind, and cut a little slit in the skin next to the thigh, to tuck in the end of the drumstick. I put bird, along with cutting board and toxic shears, into the little barsink and rinsed everything with cold water. (I really miss having a sink I can turn on easily with just a wrist, or an elbow, if need be!) Then I went to a different sink to wash my hands, and started working on a marinade. I scooped out a bowlful of yogurt, added a couple of palmfuls of Penzey's sweet curry powder and a few pinches of kosher salt, and gave the whole thing a stir until the color was even. (I didn't measure anything. Bad chemist, me!) Then I scooped the whole thing into a gallon-size ziplock bag, and sat the bag in our 9-by-13 glass dish for secondary containment. I brought the glass dish up by the sink to transfer the rinsed and drip-dried bird in, and then moved dish (with bird) back to the cart. I rubbed the marinade under the skin of the bird as best I could, and then washed my hands (again) so I could seal the bag and carry it up to the fridge.When I came back down, I dug out the bleach and sanitized the chicken-contaminated cutting board and shears, as well as the sink. (We can't leave containers of liquid open, unsupervised. Lyon's a "water cat" and he will play in, drink, or both with any body of liquid available to him.) I also cleaned the top of the cart, although I didn't think I'd splattered any chicken juice. The bird rested in the fridge for about three hours, and then I lit the grill. While the grill pre-heated, I prepped the thermometer and probe, inserting it into the thigh. I put the chicken on the grill skin side up, turned the middle burner off and the other two down to medium, and set the thermometer alarm for 165 °F. It took probably 50 minutes or so to get there, at which point I turned the chicken skin down, re-lit the middle burner, and let it go over the direct heat for 10 minutes or so, to get the skin really crisp. While it crisped, I chopped up some red bell pepper and a few cherry tomatoes, along with a smidge of sweet onion and some cilantro, to go over the last little bit of mâche leaves, with olive oil and sherry vinegar. My husband finished showering just as the bird was coming off the grill to rest. He prefers white meat, while I really love dark, so we each got one of our preferred quarters. He asked what I'd used in the marinade, which usually means it's a keeper. After that, he munched on a few corn chips, while I ate the cherries from the market yesterday. Then, dessert, upstairs! We brought bowls and an ice cream spade up, and scooped the ice cream in the kitchen, on our new counter! (Then we brought it back down to catch up on recorded Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares.) It's so close to being done...yet so far. MelissaH

Snowangel, Thanks for posting a link to your unbaked pie recipe! I like that you can do it with a graham cracker crust, which I think I can manage on the grill since my kitchen's still under renovation. Now, my question: I'm sure at least the 2 cups of cooked berries would be fine with the ones from my freezer that I'd like to use up before this year's crop comes in and we go pick more. But have you ever tried it with all frozen berries, even for the uncooked ones? Would you lose the contrast you spoke of so lovingly? MelissaH

More pictures to come tonight. The cabinets are all put together and placed. (The base cabinets won't be tied together or to the wall for a little while yet, at least until we figure out how we want to deal with the plumbing.) The ceiling is most definitely not level. We started placing the upper cabinets at the corner between the baking area and the wall with the window, and worked our way across the baking area first, then down to the window. All the bottoms are within a smidge of each other, according to the laser level. (We hung it on the wall, and let the fluid inside settle, so we know it's not whacked.) There's plenty of room to slide in a piece of molding above the cabinets on the window wall. But next to the fridge, there's enough less space that the molding will need to be shaved down, probably on the table saw. And over by the hood, there's barely any room at all, even though the bottoms of the cabinets are all still at the same height. We're thinking we won't put any molding at all at the tops of these, because they're pretty independent (just one cabinet on either side of the hood). We decided to put the two horizontal cabinets stacked one on top of the other, with an empty space at the top. We'll put the end panel all the way up to the ceiling, though: there's going to be countertop extending past the edge of the upper cabinets. If we left the opening available, I'm positive we'd find a cat up there, probably sooner rather than later. Or worse, we'd hear a cat try to make the leap, but not quite get there. We'll use the space to display whatever pretty stuff we can find that we don't think we'll want to use often, because it's up pretty high. Time for me to go downstairs and do some cat dishes, to clear out the sink. Then I'm going to butterfly the chicken that's waiting for me in the fridge, and see if I can avoid sliming anything with toxic chicken goop. MelissaH

Just a quick note about cutting mangos: the skin contains a compound related to the stuff that makes you itch in poison ivy. If you have sensitive skin, touching the outside of a mango may give you a rash. If this is the case, either wear gloves, or find someone less sensitive to do the dirty work. (My grandfather adored mango, but my grandmother always had to be the one who cut it up.) Oh, and the fruit that's always left behind on the pit? In our family, that's precious stuff. It belongs to the one who wielded the knife, to be gnawed while leaning over the sink! MelissaH

Our budget is still holding up fine, as far as I know. The vent duct materials and installation were a bit more than I'd imagined, but we've been under what we'd predicted on a bunch of other things (including the electrician). We haven't added up all the hardware store and Lowe's receipts, but right now we don't see any problems in coming in close to what we'd wanted. We haven't gotten any really nasty surprises so far, knock on wood. And the time savings over what we'd predicted is also a big boost. We haven't been eating out at restaurants much, so our food costs haven't been out of the ordinary for the past few weeks. It helps immensely, having a handy husband and willing friends. MelissaH

Tonight was a glorious night at the market. We came away with four quarts of peas (which my husband shelled into a bowl already), a quart of locally grown strawberries, and a quart of Queen Anne cherries imported from downstate. (Our local cherries won't be in for another month, at least. But when they do come in, we'll have sour ones. I hope I have a kitchen worthy of pie-baking by then!) We made a quick stop at our local bookstore before going to Anne's for dinner. We had mac and cheese (Blue Box for my husband, Annie's brand orange box for me, some of each for Anne), salad, and leftover roast chicken. I have a chicken of my own to cook tomorrow. We've had a tough time finding small birds of late; I got lucky and stumbled upon one that was only 3.59 pounds. Most of the ones we see around here are in the 4.5 pound range, which is really too big for the two of us, and too big to grill nicely. My plan is to come up with some kind of yogurt-based marinade (maybe the one from the latest issue of Fine Cooking?) and grill the bird tomorrow for dinner, either whole or butterflied. I'm a bit nervous about contaminating the entire family room cutting out the backbone, so we'll see how that goes (and keep the bleach bottle handy). It's really nice to be able to come home at night and turn on a light in the kitchen! Tomorrow we'll probably get help with the rest of the upper cabinets, because the ones left to hang are on the large side, too big for one person to easily deal with. The horizontal cabinets could be a trip to get up properly. Then, it looks like it's supposed to cool off for the weekend, so maybe Saturday morning will be a good day to go back to the attic, if we haven't fixed the electrical problems by then. (Must remember to get more batteries for the walkie-talkies beforehand.) Who uses an iPod in some kind of dock as a kitchen music source? We would like something that plays from the iPod, has a radio (at least FM, but AM also is a nice bonus), and charges the iPod directly. I love the way the Bose dock looks and sounds, but it lacks any radio. I've been looking around at the other options, and so far the iHome version has caught my eye the most. But in doing some poking around, they're coming out with a new version that includes a subwoofer at the beginning of next month. It looks a little big and clunky for the kitchen, though. I'm wondering if the under-counter mounted model might be our best bet, because it's got everything we want (including weather band radio, which we really enjoy having in our car). And the fold-up design would keep the iPod itself safely out of the line of fire. Any thoughts on the subject? MelissaH