I really wasn't being coy. The kitchen really wasn't finished. The door to the dining room still hasn't been ordered. Even so, as of today, the kitchen itself is 100% finished.

A big part of the delay since the bulk of it was finished came from my resistance to having something done the "right" way. I had had the dining room doorway moved over slightly and widened. There was a notch in the floorboard from where the old casing was. I was told that the board had to be cut flush with narrower side so that another board and threshold could be laid. Meantime, the new kitchen floor was 3/4" or so higher than the entry because I'd had it levelled. That actually put it at the same height as the dining/living rooms with their lovely 5" pecan, so I just needed a leveller between kitchen and entry rather than kitchen and dining.

I kept trying to get my wood guy on it, but his voice mail is always full and we kept missing each other, and no one knew of anyone as good or even to recommend at all. I kept trying to do things like get marble. I was sold a marble reducer that didn't match the entry, returned that and took a tile in and special ordered one. That didn't match either. So I thought of getting dark green marble at both doors to tie into other touches in the house. But then they were back at mutilating my dining room floor. So it sat while I went round and round trying to find a solution, as did the other small things that needed to be done. And the large box of grout. Sat, that is. :)

Finally, I begged my contractor to just give me his one guy who did a lot of detail work in my kitchen to make a plug to fill the trench so I wouldn't have to have carpet scraps in my doorways. So R. came. He got a pecan board. He's a workman, not a sub. He has skills, but isn't a carpenter or floor specialist or anything. So when I said I didn't want the floor cut out (I was thinking this was a stop gap until I connected with the floor guy finally), and just wanted the wood to fill the trench, he said yes. He very neatly cut out the abraded wood that was under the actual casing, and made a neat curve. Then he cut the filling piece, with the groove edge out, to fit that, and locked it into the tongue of another piece, so that the threshold would just be like another piece of the flooring laid alongside. That is, he made a piece to repair the existing plank, then filled the trench with a new plank. DUH!!! So obvious to someone who's just following orders. :) None of the "experts" figured that one out. The floor store where he bought the plank matched the finish to my old leveller (which had been sitting in my dining room all this time). It looks fantastic! I don't need no stinkin' floor expert who's so danged busy I can't get him here for two years! I have R!! After that was done, he installed the old leveller from the dining room in the entry door, so that's done for the moment too. It's "finished" until I'm ready to get the entry floor levelled and raised to match the rest. (I have a quote, but am in no hurry.)

You can see the repair in this photo. I think the patch shrank with the cold. When it was done, in the early Fall, it hardly showed at all. If it doesn't swell again, I might get it redone, but, really, who's going to know? Even with the little crack between, it looks fine.

Anyway, after all that, I was in a significantly better frame of mind to have the other niggly things done, and bit by bit they were all ticked off the list, culminating in one final little thing today, meaning that--minus the optional door--it's all done!!

You've seen this picture before, but it's a good one. The hood currently needs polishing (it's oxidized from where some bozos touched it and I haven't braved the polish--but it's done so I don't hold that against the doneness, just prefer the old picture :) ). I promise other pictures soon. Maybe that'll motivate me to get up there and polish, finally. The thing is, there's no halves. If part gets polished the whole danged thing needs it. :)