Our second casualty? C’est moi.

After most of a week having no access to our back door or rigged basement kitchen as workers installed and finished the new floors, I urged Dan to consider that we would be all back to “normal” by Monday! Great advice, in general, until last night, as I walked from our back patio to the front door and had a wicked fall on one of the uneven sidewalk pavers. Fortunately it’s just painful bruising and scratches, but painful they are! (I’ll be fine in a bit, but Dan now has gimp-help duty.)

Particularly in light of my injury and the shorter distance Dan can help me walk, especially on stairs, we were thrilled early this morning when the crews arrived to put protective paper on the floors in anticipation of finishing mudding the walls, painting, installing cabinets, and measuring for the new counters—all of which is scheduled for the remainder of the week. That means that we can now get in through the back door, avoiding the sidewalk in front, and have access to the kitchen and fridge! No more glamping!

Also this morning, we had a “halfway point” meeting (this is a name, not a reference to timeframes) with our designer and project manager to work through any issues that we could. We had not been thrilled with the communications from our project manager, but after we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, it greatly improved and we’re as happy with that as the work itself. We did ask when the back-door stoop was planned to be replaced so that it’s not a challenge to get in the door for now increasingly accident-prone me. Our project manager asked “is this important”? The fact is that it is not important; it’s just a great safety mechanism for The One Who Will Find A Fall Opportunity. He was great and agreed to have the crew install a temporary wood “step” to improve safety.

We did learn at our “halfway point” meeting that some of the delays—particularly the floor installation and finishing—mean that we won’t have appliances installed until about mid-July. This is a little disappointing as we would love to have a new kitchen and bath, but it’s understandable and has long-term payoffs. It also means that my recent fear that we haven’t purchased accoutrements (I’m typing that in a French accent, soyaknow) that may take some time for delivery are not a problem at all. Several items, such as a mirror for the 3/4 bath, mudroom furniture, and island pendants, are hand made so they take some time. That’s now just fine and we’re typically pretty patient even while we’re excited and ready for the payoff.

Our 45 (!) kitchen cabinet and drawer pulls arrived today, which is fun. Here’s a glimpse: