Theresse,
Fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes (whatever works!) crossed! Hope this guy works out so that you can move forward again! We're all waiting to hear!
Julie

Oh... I will keep my fingers crossed for you tomorrow! You have been through enough drama. Time for the happy ending to the kitchen story.

Wonderful news. I was wondering what was going on. You've been through a lot, I hope this can get finished up smoothly. Please keep us posted. Your counters are among my inspiration pictures.

My goodness. What a lot of prima donnas. So odd. Good for you, Theresse. You'll make it.

I'm so glad that you're getting someone good this time around.

I've been gone a long while too, how's hubby doing?

Kathe

I was just thinking of you! Glad to hear you may finally be back on track. Hope hubby is doing well.

And you owe us a detailed review of your super-cool faucet!!

:)

Good luck!

So proud of you for standing up to jerk GC#2! Keeping fingers and toes crossed for luck that GC#3 is the one to finish your work! I'll add my good wishes for DH's health.

Looking forward to some positive progress pics soon!

I found "Hey -- I'm not dead!" a very reassuring reboot after your long silence.

An auspicious lurching dance is being performed to optimize the outcome with the new guy. Look forward to reading how it is going.

Cheers.

Theresse!!! I have been thinking about you and was getting ready to start a "Where is Theresse?" thread. So glad you stood your ground - jeez, it's not like YOU haven't been through the wringer in so many different arenas this year. Of course #3 will work out, sounds like #2 earned his moniker...Take care and good luck. Best wishes for DH's health and your sanity :-)

Thanks for the re-welcoming responses everyone! :) Skip the individual replies below and go to the next post to read more about kitchen details...

Julie - the crossing of your body parts is WORKING!

Dianalo - thanks for the fingers crossing - it's totally working - and yes I agree there has been too much drama!

Johnliu - thank you! That's a major super kind compliment - especially considering how many pictures you see on this forum! :) I really appreciate it and thanks for thinking of me. It's going better now, at least re. the kitchen!

Aliris19 - I KNOW! Crazy weird. I don't get it - the best I can come up with is that I somehow acquired some bad karma!

Kathe - thank you. It's finally working out - yay! More details below, about the kitchen. Re. my husband, I'd love to give you some better news but yesterday we went to the doc after he had a second echocardiogram (sp?) and much to our surprise (since he's feeling and looking better and has adjusted well to the meds) they said he wasn't doing as well as they'd hoped - especially for his relatively younger age and relative health. His heart hasn't decreased in size and his EF% did get to a safer/higher number (between 30-35 as opposed to the 20-25 it was before) but it has to be 40 or above to be able to prevent getting a pacemaker put in. :( So now he's facing that and he's incredibly discouraged after how well he was feeling. Also, some of his heart is apparently dead now (?) - forget the terminology - so a second advantage of the pacemaker is that a third wire can be put in which will help sort of stimulate that area, if I'm understanding correctly. The doc says the way my husband's heart is now, he has a 5-10% chance of dying which is of course high, though he thinks on the low end cause of his general health. But still that's high!!! I forgot what the number is after the pacemaker though. He said he recommends doing it soon but he said an alternative would be up the meds (which is happening either way/regardless) and then wait 6 weeks to see if his EF# gets up to 40 but he said that's very unlikely and that postponing things is a risk, especially since we have 3 kids (and no life insurance, thank you very much...or you can thank my husband very much...we fought about this so many times prior to his diagnosis - it kills me to think about!). My husband wants to wait the 6 weeks, which is a pretty big concern - I'm pretty worried about this. I mean if you look at this as "how much luck is this couple having lately" - it points to HAVE THE SURGERY DONE NOW. Doesn't it?! Thanks for inquiring, and sorry to have such a long reply!

Marcolo - thank you! You can see the details about the hubby in the above post - and thanks for thinking of him! As for the Jaclo faucet, here's what I have to say about it TODAY anyway: I love so much about it, but the particular one I ordered has had some issues which appear to be a major fluke based on everything I've read and heard about them. The company has been very good about responding appropriately and they're about to send me a brand spanking new one. They've send some individual replacement parts which have worked out relatively well but not well enough for the amount the faucet costs! In other words for the price, this thing needs to be tight and working beautifully in every way, IMO! The man who's helping me said that the moment the order comes in from my local store (I won't be charged) he's going to take it off the shelf himself and make sure there's no jiggling in the neck and that everything else looks and works perfectly. I've been wanting to talk about the faucet on here but have been waiting to see if the issues could get resolved first so that I can give a thorough and fair review. I do love the faucet though, even with the issues. I just love how funky and different it is while also appearing period-appropriate...I love the hidden sprayer that doesn't require putting holes in your countertop, I love the choice of very high-end levers/colors or the stainless wheels option and I love love love the gorgeous polished solid stainless body that isn't as cold as chrome - it's much more like polished nickel warmth-wise but more durable. Also, because my countertop is stainless, it's a perfect match. Not blue as chrome or yellow as nickel. :)

Fori - thank you!

Flwrs n co - your positive juju is working! I'm going to be able to show pics soon it appears. The paint on the upper original cabs and crappy old windows (lead paint, mind you) is another matter. Not sure how to afford that but it looks terrible compared to all the other nice work. But you'll just have to look past that! :) Thank you for the well-wishes. We'll take any and all that we (he) can get right now.

Honorbiltkit - I can picture this dance in my mind, perfectly. Why do I have a feeling you're a writer?

Cluelessincolorado - it's good to know if I'm gone too long, you'll head up the search party! ;) #3 is making me so happy. Read below to hear all about it. Thank you for the well-wishes, including for my badly-needed sanity...you have NO IDEA, honestly (they're talking about sending me away for a week so I can get some respite - but that's mostly cause the kids are making me crazy. I think I'm developing a tick!!)!!!!

Details about kitchen in the next post below...

OK so here's the deal:

This guy's amazing - at least to me he is. He shows up every single day, by around 9:00 a.m., and stays most of the day. He works hard, takes just one lunch break that never seems long (and sometimes just eats in his car), and the work he does looks really good. Everything's straight, even, flush. He asks what I prefer but also feels free to make suggestions but he's not overbearing. He's flexible. If I want a change, no biggie (e.g. I changed my mind about one thing - about how I want the front of the pull-out cutting board to look - and he said it was no problem if I wanted to make that change and then simply explained how he'd do it). He's friendly, pleasant, articulate, shows a bit of a sense of humor and even has a child my twins' age (4.5) so doesn't seem to mind when they act up and just chuckles and talks about being in the same boat.

What he's done so far after I picked out the replacement farm sink (remember the Shaws farm sink got hairline cracks around the drain) he picked it up and had a good plumber lined up and ready to go with no delays and they took the old one out, put the new one in, helped me pick the right spot (doesn't fit perfectly due to being hand made but close enough) then got all the plumbing and caulking done right away. He ordered a new dishwasher integrated door front (the last guy ordered the wrong size and also face-framed it in so you could never take it out without harming the face frame) and he built a new face frame that makes more sense and looks more straight (can't be perfectly straight due to the first guy building slightly off cabinets!). He sanded or cut door fronts and cab doors so the reveals are a bit wider and open and close better. He did a great job hand-scribing around the curved front corners of the farm sink that is basically FLUSH up against the cabinetry as opposed to sticking out proud (due to needing to meet the wall-mounted faucet in a reasonable place). He left no wide gaps to need to be filled in, then he used the appropriate caulk in that thin space. He took off the wooden pieces the last contractor installed (unevenly) to hide the under-cabinet lighting (beneath the upper cabs) and put similar ones up only found a more reasonable solution regarding the aesthetic challenges in making it look tight and flush. It now sticks out in a way that looks deliberate - I like it a lot. My favorite part: he installed a more period-looking pull-out cutting board above the flatware drawer. I have to decide if I want it to have a little knob or not (1913 house?). The original kitchen did have a pull-out cutting board but I don't know any details about it. I guess my only tiny complaint is that I wanted the flatware drawer to be made shorter than the drawers beneath it so the cutting board hole would have a face frame surrounding it, including beneath it too, and that's not how he did it for some reason - though I may not have been very clear. So the drawer front - while being the same hight as the drawers beneath it - is taller than the drawer's box since the original contractor had decided (without asking me) to make it a modern pull-out board that would hide inside there, thus needing a taller drawer front). So now, the way this new contractor did it, there's no faceframe separating the cutting board and the drawer beneath it/the drawer front. But it doesn't look awkward as it may sound. This may be because the first contractor had a underlay wood thingie protruding down quite a bit so there's no room to make the cutting board much higher if at all. Lastly, he primed and painted and will finish the last coat of paint Monday (of the lower cabs only) and then he'll reinstall the hardware only will put it the bin pulls in slightly better locations.

That was long (surprised?) but now you know everything. I'll post pics at my first opportunity. Must find the camera's battery charger!

Thanks again everyone!!!

p.s. the guy who recommended this guy - our friendly neighborhood wood floors guy - will probably come refinish our floors after this (the floors that give us splinters!). I figure that's the least we can give him after referring him.

I hope I haven't jinxed anything by speaking so highly of this new guy before he's done - before I've paid him!! : -/

Also I forgot to mention that he's going to put a sink drip rail in so that if water splashes over the front of the sink it will fall onto that instead of onto the cabinet doors below. I know Circuspeanut has a great drip rail and that maybe one other person on here has one that doesn't show up well for me due to being so dark in color but if anyone else has pics of drip rails, please do share! Thanks!

That sounds great!

Re: the cutting board, that's the same way our cabinetmaker made ours for some reason, though I'd shown him our old framed boards and asked for the same thing. We went back and forth about what to do with it (couldn't just make the drawer smaller so we could add the face frame, since it would be way too shallow) and I actually thought in the end we'd agreed that he'd bring what he'd designed originally and we'd try it, but then he showed up with new drawer fronts to just cover the space and drop the cutting board, so we went with it. I'm curious to see what yours looks like, though, since in theory we can always switch ours back. (He didn't end up installing the wood glides for the boards but otherwise the drawer boxes are the same, and I should probably ask if he still has the old drawer fronts, to hang on to...maybe too late!)

I think a lot of cabinet people only do the modern boards with the hardware these days, since when we were shopping around that's what people kept proposing. I was psyched to find someone who wanted to build the old style breadboard, but just didn't communicate clearly enough that I wanted it fully framed in...ah, well. I will say that we use our short-drawers-with-tall-fronts a LOT---they were intended for flatware but by the time the cutting boards got dropped, we had far more clearance than I wanted to waste on little things, so we actually keep big things like Pyrex measuring cups and jars and the flour sifter in there. The shorter drawer box doesn't seem to matter at all.

Also, our original cutting boards (circa 1915) didn't have knobs, though I see boards with them periodically---I'd go with whichever you like better. I never had problems pulling ours out (and we had planned no knobs for the new ones) but they did occasionally get a little dirty if I was using them for baking or what-have-you...a knob might help a bit with that.

Can't wait to see the photos---glad it's all working out!

Artemis78 - actually another thing he did which was a tiny bit disappointing is that he chose metal glides! I wanted it very old fashioned but he strongly suggested the metal ones because he said they'd be much stronger. I guess I should have stuck to my guns on that one but I it wasn't too big a deal to me cause I agreed. So from the front it looks old fashioned and the board is your traditional board but other than that, not so much! It may sound silly but I kinda missed that clunky wooden sound of pulling out the bread board from the wooden glides - I have no idea why. I also had some fears of metal getting rusty but I don't know if that's realistic or not. I can only assume they're stainless (?). I don't think there's any reason water would be in there but with kids you never know eh? ;)

I've entertained the idea of asking if the drawer front can be cut as I'd originally meant him to and then somehow add a piece of face front but I don't suppose that can be done at this point. Anyway I like him and his work for the most part. He's pretty much issue-free compared to anyone I've had to deal with before!

Re. knob or no knob, I'll look at the Bungalow Kitchens book which has such good reviews - I just bought it finally! :)

Theresse,

I am glad to hear your reno is going better. Also glad to have an update re your DH. I have sent you email on your GW-listed addy; we have faced some of the same heart issues with my DH, but we are a couple of years down the road. Perhaps our experiences could be helpful to you? My Dh is doing very well, now!

L

liriodendron - thank you! Did I write you back (I should remember, sorry!) or do you mean recently? I'll check that acct. - I rarely use it cause I'm so afraid of forums like this sending me junk mail but I wish I had the trust enough in them to use my regular email address so I could know when people from the forum contact me! We'd LOVE your advice!! Thanks so much...