The Cape Cod kitchen and laundry room renovation proceeds. How do you like it so far?

Yup – that was our “camping” set-up while waiting for the kitchen. Four weeks ago, it looked like this.

A week later…

We got the final coat of varnish on all the floors two weeks back.

One day later, I called time and set up the family room—enough of being camped out in the bedroom.

Granted, we still have builders’ cardboard over the high-traffic areas, but at least we have somewhere to sit in comfort. The dogs are ecstatic.

This week, we got kitchen countertops, so the sink, garburator, dishwasher and cooktop are now hooked up, to my tremendous relief. We had pasta with shrimp in pesto last night for dinner. Heavenly.

One funny mishap was the powder room faucets, which arrived last August. Unfortunately, they were installed only this week when it was discovered they came with two cold taps, shown below, both in the “off” position. Hmmm… That’s not quite what I had in mind. The supplier is sending us a replacement “hot” cartridge, so hopefully, this will be resolved. Otherwise, I think we’ll go with cross-shaped handles, so the need to move both taps in the same direction will be less noticeable.

Yesterday, we waited and waited and waited for Teddy the Tile Guy to show up to install the kitchen backsplash. He breezed in at 4:45 pm, surveyed the job, and airily announced he would text us later that evening to let us know if he would be coming today or sometime this week. Needless to say, no text arrived. So we wait. Again. As Glenn commented wryly, we are now at the stage where the last 10% of the project takes 50% of the follow-up. It’s all little bits — a couple of missing pulls for kitchen cabinets, the final pieces of crown moulding and toe kick, cabinet lighting, and an elusive wall-mounted laundry rack. By and large, the project has gone really well. We’re delighted with the quality of the cabinetry and the workmanship. But any endeavour involving multiple trades and many moving parts is going to progress in fits and starts. With the best will in the world, things get missed or forgotten. And require patience, diplomacy and plenty of follow-up to resolve.

Stay tuned, dear readers! I’ll do a full write-up closer to the finish line.