doing some floor prep

So - we did get our stove delivered the other day, but after I got it all unboxed - we saw a big dent in the back panel, so we had to call and have another delivered this morning.  Argh!  But the delivery guys were great, and our new one is sitting here ready to be installed.  Which I'll do in the morning....

With the money we got from selling our old stove ($160 bucks, woot!), I bought a tile saw on craigslist.  Our plan is to buy a tile saw rather than renting one - we rented one twice for the bathroom, and I could get a used one for less than that.  When we're done with our renos, we'll just sell this tile saw on craigslist for what we paid for it.  That's what we did with our old stove, actually - we paid 150 for it, so we even made a ten dollar profit!

This saw was only $130 - works great.  Well it did until the switch broke at the end of the day!  It's a 3.99 fix, so tomorrow I'll get most of the rest of the marble cut.  After spending an hour cutting a bunch of strips, I laid out a sample of the border on the sidewalk:

We tried several sequences, the original one I'd drawn up was a little too involved, so this is what she ended up with.  I have a lot of skinny strips to cut -- I need a total of 80 1" white strips, 32 1" black strips, 48 4" black strips, and there's the center black and white checkerboard of full tiles.  We brought some of the pieces in and took a look at how we're going to deal with corners --

We're working on the corners -- I think we'll mitre the corners of both borders.  Ironically, this is what I went out to do when the switch broke.  But taking a break was good, we had some errands to do and needed a break for dinner!  I'll cut the rest of the pieces tomorrow.  I can't wait to get started!

Getting the floors moving along

Dale's back is still hurting - he's been going to physical therapy to get that muscle mass relaxed, and so our progress is still s.l.o.w.....but I did get the hardwood flooring section integrated:

We are planning to have a place where we can slide barstools up under the island, and I wanted the floor to be uninterrupted there.  We'd found some good match hardwood at Lumber Liquidators, and along with several other places in the house that will need patching, we bought one bundle so we could get an integrated look here.  We will be refinishing the floors at the end of the kitchen remodel, as it moves into the living room, so getting an unfinished floor will save us from having to run the sander up under the island so much.

We also had our stove delivered this morning.  My goal is to get the floors done this week while I'm on spring break, and also get the cabinets ordered.  Although progress is slow, it's moving along OK.

We did take a little drive around on Saturday. I'm trying to keep Dale moving so he doesn't get his muscles stiff from sitting in a recliner, so we did a trip to LACMA (Los Angeles County Art Museum) where I am a member, and he can come along as my guest.  I'm trying to work my way through the museum one trip at a time, without getting overwhelmed.  The last time I was there, I visited the two blockbuster shows - a Stanley Kubric exhibition and a Caravaggio exhibition that were both great.  This time we went through the modern and contemporary collection, and enjoyed seeing Chris Burden's Metropolis in action:

the little cars are whizzing around -- last time I visited, it wasn't in motion, so this was fun to experience.  We also had to walk under Levitated Mass, which is a fun experience as well.

While we were downtown LA, we decided to stop over and visit the little railroad known as Angel's Flight.  It's a railway on a pulley system, and we rode up:

Then walked around the plaza before finding a nearby Geocache and braving the traffic on the way home.  Other than that, we are trying to balance enjoying the time off and getting some work done on the kitchen.  We decided to scrap the arch, instead, we are going to build up the beam a little with some molding - watching one of our HGTV reno shows, we saw a really effective approach while keeping the beam straight across, and I think that'll suit our place better.  It's mostly about adding some interest to a pretty basic setup here.