In my mother-in-law's eulogy for her sister, she mentioned that Denise was awesome at cleaning windows. Through the sadness I couldn't suppress a small snicker at those words. Indeed, when we bought this house in April 2002, the previous owner had left us with yellowed window sills and window glass caked with years' worth of nicotine stains. We held a big cleaning day where many generous family members arrived with supplies in hand and helped us get the house ready to be lived in. Aunt Denise's job was to clean those filthy windows and sills, and I still remember her attacking them with rag on the end of a paint stirrer. When she was done, those windows glistened. I'm sure a few unsuspecting birds must've thought they were open, those darn things were so clean.
So the first purpose of my post today is to thank a woman who enriched our lives in many ways and also helped make our house a home. Aunt Denise, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your selfless gifts, both tangible and intangible, over the years you were in our lives. We will always miss you.
The Great Cabinet Search of 2010
While the Murphy grandparents kept the boys for us this weekend, Ken and I took advantage of the time and got four quotes on cabinets for our new kitchen. Only one of them was completely out of the ball park at over $11,000, and that was for cabinets that resembled what we really want but weren't exactly it. So out goes one of four quotes. The other three quotes are fairly close to each other, which means when the time comes to order cabinets (August?) we'll get updated quotes from each supplier and see what the final costs would be once any promotions are factored in. We're aiming to come in under $9000, and under $8000 would be even better.
The style we have picked is sold under different brand names, but under the Kraftmaid brand it's called Sonora.
We picked the cherry finish with chocolate glaze, which I believe is what is pictured above. Does that make you hungry? It makes me hungry every time we talk about it. I picture ice cream with lots of chocolate chunks and several maraschino cherries rolling around in the mound of whipped cream on top. I think cabinet makers' marketing departments know exactly what they're doing. Regardless, it's a rather traditional-looking cabinet with a clean line that really appeals to us. We've decided to invest in all-plywood construction to make sure our cabinets are here for the long haul.I'll post our kitchen layout in a later post because we want to do some tweaking now that we've had a weekend to absorb the world of cabinetry, but basically it'll be an ell plus an angled island. I should have enough cabinet space for all the pots, pans, dishes, gadgets, and small appliances without leaving anything out on the counter other than the coffee pot and toaster oven. In addition, we'll have a pantry, which we don't currently have.
Last but not least, I will finally--for the first time in my life--have a dishwasher! The skin on my hands will thank me, and I won't have to spend time doing three loads of dishes by hand each day. I will happily deal with all the new issues a dishwasher brings about just to avoid having to do dishes the old-fashioned way after every meal. You'd better believe we'll be teaching the boys how to load and unload it as soon as they are old enough to safely do so.
Well, with the cabinets selected, minus some final tweaking, we're one small step closer to the finish line....
