Recovery

Well, it has been over two weeks since the last post which was, of course, about the big party, aka Anna and Courts' wedding.  We are really still recovering from the hectic couple of months leading up to the wedding.  However, as you saw in the last posting, it was a fantastic event! 

The Swiss contingent that you have heard so much about had a great time.  Monica's biological father, Hans, and his wife Leila left on the Monday after the wedding.  However, the two nephews and their significant others stayed on another week.  So, there was no resting.  There was a lot of eating and imbibing of good beverages.  I don't think we've have ever gone thru so much beer in one week.

Monica had a couple of days off but Andy had to go back to work on Monday.  So, he missed all the daytime activities like shopping, the Dallas World Aquarium, Denton, etc. But somehow he managed to make all of the evening activities which was mostly eating and drinking.  They particularly loved going to the steakhouse as steaks are extremely expensive in Switzerland and not quite as big as in Texas! 

Angelo can't believe that he ate the whole thing while Deborah looks very sleepy.

Marco and Corrine having a great time.

The highlight of the week was the trip to the Dallas Stars hockey game.  Both Marco and Angelo play hockey in Switzerland and are huge hockey fans.  They know a lot more about the NHL than we do.  Angelo said the best part of week was walking into the American Airlines Arena and seeing the hockey rink for the first time.

This was the absolute favorite part of the week after the wedding.

Marco and Angelo wore their Zurich hockey team jerseys.  They got a lot of questions about those.

 On Friday they left for a few days in NYC on their way back to Zurich.  Before they left they had a fun game of "3d Tetris" trying to get the results of shopping into their suitcases.  It was a great week.

The weekend after they left we just pretty much crashed the entire weekend.  Andy did work on the cabinets.  He had purchased addition cabinets for the sunroom and needed to get those installed as the granite guy was scheduled to come out on Monday to measure.  It is hard to get an accurate measurement if all of the base cabinets aren't installed.  So, Andy had to get that done.  Then he got sick Saturday with a cold and was out off and on for a week and is still suffering from some lingering congestion and allergies.  Monica also had problems with congestion and allergies.  We're too old for the pace we had been keeping for a couple of months.  Oh well, it was all worth it and we're recovering.

Since this is a blog about our renovation, we should mention what has been happening with that.  Well, RHD is really finished with their part and it is Andy's turn.  So progress won't be quite as fast-paced which unfortunately does not necessarily make for an exciting blog.  Andy's first priority is to get the cabinets finished.  He did install the additional cabinets in the sunroom and is working on the cabinet shelves, drawers and doors.

These are the cabinets in the sunroom which will in essence be a dry bar, beverage center and coffee bar.  The appliance in the middle is a two zone beverage center with wine storage in the upper compartment and soft drink/beer storage in the bottom compartment.  The door for the cabinet on the left are not installed because of the 400 or so packages from IKEA, there was a mis-packaging of one of the doors for this unit.  So, Andy has to get that exchanged.  This will have the same black galaxy granite that the kitchen will have.. the kitchen is just to the right. 

This is the kitchen wall that is the same wall as the sunroom cabinets.  The cabinet on the far left is an 88 in tall pantry cabinet will pull out shelves.  Just to the left of that is the above sunroom cabinets separated by a wall partition.  Andy left the doors to the sink cabinet off as he has to remove the plumbing, the sink and the temporary counters before the granite is installed.  And then, of course, he has to reinstall the plumbing.

The fridge has two pull out pantry cabinets on each side and a normal above-fridge cabinet above.  Andy will add a trim panel between the fridge cabinet and the top of the fridge to give it that built-in look.

This is the cooking center.  There are a lot of drawers for cooking utensils. Our old kitchen had a severe lack of good storage.  There are four drawers on each side of the range.  The the two outer base cabinets each have two deep drawers and a smaller drawer.  Unfortunately our microwave is just a bit took big for the microwave cabinet on the left.  However it is a great space for the toaster oven.  The range hood is quite powerful with six speed settings going up to a whopping 900 cfm!  That should keep Anna from setting off the fire alarm when she cooks.  I think the old one really did suck any air at all.  Eventually all of the cabinets will have stainless steel colored toe kicks.

As a reminder, here is what the kitchen looked like before.

This is the kitchen before.  Andy is standing in the breakfast area as far back as he can.

This is the breakfast area looking from the kitchen.

Compare that to this picture of the entire new kitchen.

Andy took this picture from what used to be the patio.  The wall on the left was where the outside wall used to be.  The old sink, which was the end of the kitchen itself, was located just in from of where the new sink is located.  As you can see, this kitchen is just wee bit bigger.

Monica is so excited that the cabinets are nearly finished and she can start bringing things back from storage and organizing everything.  Of course, now there is a whole lot of new kitchen stuff to add... so she will make use of the additional space with no problem.

Next on Andy's to-do list is to install all of the handles which is his project for the weekend.

Since we lost the old patio area with the new addition, we really needed something to replace that.  In an earlier post we discussed taking out some badly overgrown bushes next to the house and adding more pool decking to that area.  Well, Andy finally had a bit of time to setup the new patio area.

From left to right.  A little table with two chairs are just outside the sunroom windows.  A great place for morning coffee.  Then the hangout area with an outside sofa and chairs.  Then finally is the grilling area.  It actually works out well.

Going forward, Andy only has evenings and weekends, the progress will be slow so we will probably post once a week unless something significant happens.