Towards Wisdom

A frenzy of activity marked the Friday afternoon appliance installation. My contractor’s crew were connecting hoses and wires and the appliance movers were shuttling bulky items up and down the stairs. The manual was missing from the dishwasher, the cooktop was not present in the shipment, and the dishwasher lacked the features I ordered. We resolved these problems and got the kitchen to a mostly-finished state.

The one big problem that remains is that the cabinets do not properly hold the Thermador oven. As a result, the Thermador cooktop cannot rest flush against the countertop. See the picture below. The store that sold me the cabinets and appliances is sending over an installer next week to take a look at the kitchen. Presumably they are going to do some in-place modification of the cabinets to make things fit. From my assessment of the situation, there is very little room for error in their changes.

Continue reading “New Appliances”

On Wednesday my contractor installed the marble wall tile with two horizontal glass tile features. As expected, his work was fantastic. My kitchen would be done today if we were not waiting for the delivery of the second cooktop and second dishwasher. Those were supposed to come today, but that turned into “tonight” as the day progressed. My contractor says that he will come by tomorrow to finish up.

The first (and only) mistake of my contractor’s team is the additional, unneeded holes they drilled in my above-countertop cabinets. I am installing handles for everything below the countertop and knobs for everything above. One of the workers mistakenly drilled two holes for the above-countertop cabinets which means one hole too many. There is a picture below of the cabinet door after he attempted to fix the superfluous hole. New cabinet doors are on the way.

Continue reading “Wall Tile”

Sunday morning Ruth and I drove an hour south of our homes to Aromas, CA, the home of TLC Ranch.  We know of TLC Ranch because of the high-quality eggs they sell at the Mountain View farmer’s market every Sunday.  It was at that market that we met one of the farm’s owners, Jim Dunlop.  At his stall Jim laid out  pictures of his farm and its animals: cows, chickens, and impossibly cute piglets.  One look at the pictures and I knew this business would command my loyalty.

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When I came home from work there was a Good Friday parade on Rengstorff Ave. in Mountain View. This is strange. For those of you that have not been here, Rengstorff is a residential street bridging the freeway and the valley’s surface street artery, El Camino Real. It is the most unlikely, spectator-less place in the area. The police blocked off a lane of traffic and about 200 mostly-Latinos somberly marched Jesus to his crucifixion.

Continue reading “Mountain View Jesus”