Then Andrew Jackson Got Involved...

First of all, since I plumb forgot to put an end-time on The Johnny Game, I will leave it open to entries for one more day. It officially closes tomorrow when I wake up and sit at the computer. Probably sometime around 6:30. In the morning. My time. Got it?

Second: so many good things are happening in our life (well, not necessarily good things, but things that would make killer stories) and you’re not getting to hear any of it because this kitchen recap is dragging on so long.

Hm. Methinks perhaps there is a cosmic kinship there between the story and the telling of it. Anyhoo…

I’m going to Speedy-Delivery the rest of this. Which might mean several posts a day, if I can find the time. I want to get it told already, so that next week we can get back to our Regularly Scheduled Programming of Me, Bitching About My Life. Chapters you’ve missed now include: Why I Have to Have My Oral Surgery AGAIN*; Why We Can’t Finish Starting to Finish the Kitchen For At Least Another Month; Why I Just Might Be the Worst Person on the Whole Entire Planet; and How Johnny Seems to Have Gone Down in Dental Sympathy With Me.

Aren’t you excited? I knew you would be.

So, to task:

We had no clue how the process of cabinet-buying was supposed to go. Do you order by the shelf? By the foot? By the room? What if your kitchen is really, really small? And you’re only doing half of it? From the waist down? For all we knew, the answer to all these questions might be “twelve.” But, having filled out the ream of paperwork it took to order a simple stove, we were flush with purchasing and decision-making power. We sidled over to the cabinet department, sat down in front of The Guy – actually, there were Two Guys – and announced:

“We need to redo our kitchen. By St. Patrick’s Day. Because, you see, we’ve got the family coming over for corned beef.”

Two Guys looked at each other and laughed.

“That’s three weeks,” one said.

“Never gonna happen,” said the other.

“I hate you both, you big mean meanies,” I telepathed. But what I said was:

“…

“?

“!”

After I’d made that perfectly clear, they allowed as how we could go with the do-it-yourself cabinetry, which comes in a variety of standard sizes and colors, plus fillers for the gaps -- because your kitchen is not a standard size. If we bought those and put them in ourselves, they said, we just might make it. But if we wanted custom-ordered installation, we were looking at sometime well after Easter.

Johnny and I looked at each other and laughed.

“Custom-ordered?” he repeated.

“Never gonna happen,” I chimed in.

Can you imagine paying somebody to put your cabinets in? That would be a luxury on par with, I don’t know, having running water in your kitchen! Which we, of course, no longer had. Because it makes sense to tear everything out before you get any of the new stuff. So you can wash your dishes in the bathtub and dump your spaghetti-water down the toilet bowl. Except of course we didn’t have any spaghetti-water, because we didn’t have any spaghetti, because we had no stove. But you see what I’m getting at: no running water in the kitchen. You may call me Half-Pint, if you must.

Guys 1 and 2 walked us through the steps we’d have to take to do this job ourselves. The first involved measuring your kitchen and deciding what you need – which we obviously hadn’t done yet, so we obviously were not going home with any cabinets today. Other steps had to do with working around existing structures, which we just ignored, seeing as how there were no structures existing anymore. There were a few that involved cutting holes in countertops etcetera, and then, as we walked away with our brochures and graph-y kitchen maps, Guy 1 (or else Guy 2) tossed out this gem:

“Make sure you hang the wall cabinets before you put the floor ones in. It makes for—”

Silly Guy. We aren’t even getting wall cabinets. Not for years.


[*WAIT! Update: Dentist just called. Maybe I don't have to have the surgery again, after all. But I do have to go in this afternoon for a consultation, so the Big Mucky-Muck can look in my mouth and make a Final Decision. So I won't be able to post again today, after all. Hell damn crap!]