I've spent a goodly bit of time recently considering updates/improvements to my house. I've mentioned that the primary task soon will be a complete re-wiring of mi casa. This has everything to do with safety and nary a whit to do with aesthetics. Frankly, I'd rather spend those thousands on something pretty, but I clearly need to re-wire my thinking, because nothing's a prettier thought to think than that my pups are safe in my house when I'm away.

That said, the grode factor of the kitchen-- while technically clean-- still oogies me out a bit, and I'm on the horns of a dilemma with regard to what to do. The 1931 metal cabinets are not horridly out of form, but they are covered by 3/4 century of contact paper, (doubtlessly lead) paint, and whatever much couldn't be scrubbed out in the days of toil I spent trying to clean them properly prior to moving in last year. I'm in a state of sticker shock, actually-- I can't believe that for my small kitchen I'd be looking at $5000 - $7000 for cabinets and counters I would find to my liking. Now my thoughts have turned to simply adding a wood cabinetry island (part of my cunning plan all along) and taking out the metal cabinets for a proper strip/de-grode/exorcism, but we'll see. One thing that drives me round the bend is that two of the upper cabinets were hung not flush together, so I can see goodness-knows-how-many years of grot in that 1/4" space in between them. It's just been too gross to tackle...

I can see miles of daylight around the front and back doors. Seconds and Surplus in Dallas has these amazing doors. Either of these doors would work for me, stylistically, and for a heavy solid wood door, I think the $600-ish tag is not bad. I'd leave them natural-looking, but I guess I'd need to wax them or seal them to keep them from getting grimy?

Oh, and they don't have lots of the smaller bits and bobs, but S&S is an outstanding place for door casing, baseboard and crown molding. Seriously, their prices were about 1/4 of what I priced my crown molding to be here in Backwoods Burgh.

Anyhoo, this was all food for thought, and I suppose the whole grand project will be taking shape in months to come. It's going to take a lot of creativity to work around the sheer financial daunt of the whole thing. Fingers crossed and all that. I'll settle for the outlay of cash being more than I'd hoped but far less than I'd feared.

Spent Saturday night with my lovely parents. We went to breakfast and we talked about a trailer we rented in 1967 when I was a wee girl. We laughed so hard. That story will be coming soon. Nice weekend, but it's good to be home with teh puppehs.

Cheers, m'dears!
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