Chuck Hagenbuch

The street I live on is lined with ginkgo trees. In the fall they turn a bright brilliant yellow and drop their leaves over a long enough period to pave a carpet below while still shining above. It's a small thing I love about a time of year and a place that I love.

When J and I moved in to our house, we were really happy that most of it simply didn't need work. Our kitchen fell into that category... but only in terms of functionality. The pink laminate counter tops, which were peeling in places, were not close to either of our hearts.

We were planning to tackle the counters, along with the whole kitchen, after ten years or so, mostly for financial reasons, and probably with professionals. But J did some research and found that we could get butcher block counters from IKEA for a reasonable price, and that installation was probably in our skill set.

And so we bought materials (3 lengths of beech butcher block style counters, a cast iron sink, a new faucet, Waterlox for sealing the counters, plumbing supplies, and assorted other parts), did a little more research, and set aside Veteran's Day Weekend to do the work. 

We're really, really happy with the results. The whole kitchen is warmer with the additional wood, the sink is gorgeous and spacious (the Thanksgiving turkey was grateful for the extra room, certainly), and now the dishwasher is the lone bisque holdout from the previous appliances and fixtures.

We took pictures to document the whole transformation, with comments.

This is what my back yard looked like when we bought the house a bit over a year ago:

Okay, to be fair the old car parts did leave (eventually) with the prior owner.

This is what it looks like now:

I'm especially happy with the extra space we got by removing the raised bed around the hydrangea tree. The gravel area you see in the first "after" picture will be a patio at some point in the spring, with a table, four chairs, and a bench. We were going to use some sort of generic-ish paver for it, but J found us 22 24"x24"x2" bluestone slabs on Craigslist, free for the pickup.

It's a lovely space, and the patio will match our front driveway walk nicely. We can no longer park seven cars, though.

I currently get my internet connection through Speakeasy (DSL). They're good, and they're server-friendly, but it's slow and expensive - and if something goes wrong, there are three separate entities involved (Speakeasy, Covad, and Verizon - it is not a plus that I now know what CLEC and ILEC mean), which makes troubleshooting ... interesting. I'd like to switch to RCN, who are starting service in my neighborhood. I've used RCN before; they let you buy a static IP for a residential account which makes them server-friendly, it's fast, and we'd switch our cable TV to them as well and consolidate two bills (for less than we were paying).

So I call RCN to find out when they might be serving my address (their website thinks that my house simply doesn't exist - according to RCN, my street consists of number 116, apartment 2, and number 122, apartment 3).

(I should note at this point that there are RCN wires already running past my back yard; in fact one of their wires was hanging into my garden, and they sent a truck to fix it.)

When I talk to RCN sales, they don't know when they might serve my address, but they give me a phone number for the local office and promise to have someone call me within 5 days. Over a week later I try the number for the local office and get someone's voicemail. I've left "Jane" four or five messages now, and received a single call back, about a week after the first message. In that call, someone (not Jane) promised to talk to the people who know which sections of my neighborhood are being lit up when, and to call me back with the info on Friday (this was a Monday).

That was last week.

On the other hand, Comcast, which should be at least as much of a big bureaucracy as RCN, called me with pricing and emailed me a contract two days after filling out a form on their website. Unfortunately Comcast requires getting "business class" service to get a static IP and that means a contract length of a year that has to be re-upped a full year at a time. But if RCN can't manage to call me back and give me a date...

This is not an isolated incident. J recently had to endure a small saga to purchase propane to fill the tank for our grill. Multiple rounds of "sorry, the propane filling station is closed - we'd love to help you out, but it's locked." "Actually it's not, I just walked by it." "Well it closes at 6..." "Two days ago you told me it closes at 7." "Was that Friday? We're open late Friday." "... since today is Wednesday, no." And so on.

I've even encountered this from someone who works on commission. J and I were ordering a refrigerator from Sears, to be delivered to the movers who were moving us into our condo. We wanted to buy an air conditioner at the same time. The air conditioner we wanted was available for sale on Sears' web site. But the salesman, who again I note was ON COMMISSION, refused to sell it to us. He told us it was "out of season."

We went home and J ordered it online. It shipped, to the same Sears that we had been in, within two days.