Update September 9

I had a fit of wood-working prowess yesterday. I've been staring at our chest of drawers-serving-as-a-vanity for weeks, bare of drawers, and kinda sad-looking, with its 25-year-old ripped hole in the bottom so you can see the tiled floor staring woefully at me each time I'm in there. So I went and found the drawers that would fit in there and set to work. The bottom-most drawer fit like a champ . . . no effort expended there, although the drawer itself might need some help someday, as its ancient and kinda inept at being a drawer with the bottom a bit loose. The second-from-bottom drawer only needed a small notch cut out of the back to accommodate plumbing pipes. No problem there, either. The third-from-bottom (also known as second-drawer-down) needed surgery. Only a couple of 1 x 6s, jigsaw, pull-saw, drill with spade bit, hammer, miter saw, corner sander, coping saw, pancake compressor, power brad nailer, and nail-end clipper later, and I was done with that drawer. Now it looks more like the letter "E" with the middle thingy missing. I guess that would be a "C", right? And it fits!! And I didn't need Rich's help! I am SO proud of myself, I can't stand it. Rich was happy with it, so I'll tackle the upper drawers today, I think.

I think our kitchen is going to be kick-a&& when we're done. There's so much to do, but we both find ourselves just stopping and admiring the beauty of the cabinets that area already on the wall. It's motivating, to say the least.

Thus motivated, we were going to work on cutting the plywood for the floor under the living room wall kitchen cabinets when we realized we didn't have any more shims. Time to go to Ace Hardware (nearby).

After leaving the store in disgust because 14 shims will cost us $3.00, we went to Lowe's. Why we didn't start there, I'm not sure. I should have known "the helpful place" will ream you whenever possible. "Need shims because you don't want to pollute the air or waste gas driving further, or waste time? That will cost you twice what you'd pay at a big-box store. Thank you very much." We showed them. We wasted that extra $1 in gas and drove to Lowe's.

Spent more time in Lowe's than anticipated, pre-shopping for our "big shopping trip" to Lowe's probably some time next week. Back in the day, a dinner and a trip to Lowe's was the perfect date, so it wasn't a wasted night. We looked to make sure they had a lot of what we wanted, and made some decisions about designs on trim, etc. so that when we go back, it'll be a faster trip. Bed moulding, mini colonial crown, simple ceiling medallion, middle curtain brackets, beautiful doors . . . needless to say, it took us a while to buy 28 shims for $3.00.

Decided we wanted dinner out, which took WAY TOO LONG to wait for to-go food, came home and ate food that was a bit cool, a bit dry, and a bit too rancid/olivey tasting for me, and then gave up on the whole night. Tomorrow is another day.