Happy Thanksgiving!

For those celebrating Thanksgiving today, I hope you're having a great day!

We enjoyed dinner with Troy's dad and stepmom as guests and finished it up with spiced apple-pear pie. It was yummy.

Give thanks with a grateful heart! :)

Sometimes the Sky is Falling

So Troy and I were still in bed this morning (that bittersweet time after the alarm has gone off but before you've decided you really do have to get out of bed for the day) when we heard a big bang/crash. After the first pressing question of whether there was someone else in the house (no), the next was "What was that!?" Usually I'm pretty good at guessing what unexpected noises are, but I had nothing for this one.

When Troy made it downstairs, he saw this:

A huge chunk of our ceiling fell to the floor! It's been coming down in little, little pieces for a while, but now it looks like more of it is eager to come down:

I was trying to think of a time when I could deal with the mess that would come from taking more of this down, and not looking forward to it...but then I realized that if I don't get to it, the ceiling will make a mess all on its own and I'm sure it won't wait for it to be convenient for me. So I guess I'd better find some time to tackle it!

And Then There Were Two

I am very happy to announce that I now am the proud owner of a two-sink kitchen.

I'll try not to carry on too much because I know some of you thought I was crazy about my first sink (and I don't want to make her too jealous as I welcome her little brother).

I was tempted to put it into action right away and start cleaning some random vegetables (what I intend as its primary function), but that was going a bit far and might lead to actual cooking...

Just to be complete in my documentation, here are the plumbing works.

Troy had the drain hooked up last night and worked on the supply lines today. When we turned it on the first time, we had a leak, but it turned out to be a faulty o-ring that was quickly replaced.

And now a couple of glamour shots because really...how much can I say about putting in a sink?

Well, actually I can tell you it's a single basin porcelain sink from the same company as big sister. It's a full 9" depth. It's been sitting in the corner of my kitchen for quite a long time, and I am very happy to have it installed! The faucet also matches the faucet on the main sink, but it's a three-hole instead of a four-hole style. (The sprayer comes out of the base instead of out of its own hole beside the base.) But otherwise they are the same.

Welcome to the family, little guy!

Some work and some play

Troy has been working on the trim on the kitchen island over the last few weeks. When he put it on the other counters, he stained it before he installed it. He found that it got a little too abused during the installation and then needed to be touched up, so this time he installed it first and stained it in place. It worked pretty well.

He went ahead and did the nails the "right way" and countersunk them and filled in the holes with wood filler, but he actually likes the look of the flush nails on the counter trim better. He thinks that besides being more work, this looks more obvious and actually detracts more. Live and learn.

Once his trim was stained and urethaned, I was up for grouting. I didn't get to it for about a week and then was sick with a cold this week (a good excuse), but this morning I got to it. I pulled a Troy and fit it into a tight space before going to the ND game today.

Took about an hour and a half from start to finish (including clean up, of course), and it looks great (in my opinion). Although I was afraid the grout would emphasize the uneven spacing, it really just brings everything together. I also was a little unsure about the colour because I thought I wanted something more red to make it look like one piece. I couldn't find red and went with this bone or beige colour (I forget) because it matched the veins pretty well. Or I thought it would. It's not like I had the actual tiles with me in the store (they vary a lot anyway) and it's a little hard to get a feel for the colour from a tiny square swatch on the bag. But it worked out; it's good.

In this picture you can see how the finish is already failing (middle left of picture). We don't know what has affected the tile (tomatoes, a juice, water???) but this kind of "clouding" has turned up in a couple locations. I've come to grips with it...and some day we'll figure out how to refinish the tiles and fix it. But it will just happen again, so I'm not going to get too uptight about it. (I'm not. Really.)

Having accomplished that, I set off to meet Troy for the game. A bit of a dull go for a while but ended with a pretty exciting fourth quarter and triple overtime, with the final result of a win and 9-0 for the season! Go Irish!

Final score (finally!)

 Happy fans: