While a purple hat in Mecha got quietly worked on in the other room for the most part: Joel came and spent a fair amount of time measuring everything we might ask him about later. His boss knows we’d like to redo the whole kitchen even if we don’t plan to right now, so I’m sure there was incentive to make that a possibility as long as he was there.

He admired our cabinets, saying, They don’t make them like that anymore.

Yes, they were custom made–but in the early 90s, when the state was requiring certain finishes on the wood for the environment’s sake, rescinded after they found out those don’t hold up. The skylight bleached it out; they need to be refinished.

Refinished, definitely, and we can do that, he told me. He was glad I knew how good what I had was.

(It’s everything else that has to go. The Bosch dishwasher. It can stay too.)

The big but independent appliance place I bought my Speed Queen washer/dryer from got back to me with questions about inches and placement re replacing the stove set-up, and it looks like we have clearance enough, if barely, to not have to knock out part of the wall behind the stove, so now Joel knows his guys are not the only ones I’m talking to and that’s always a good thing.

So we are one day and several steps closer.

Joel had so carefully not been eyeing my blueberry/orange juice/almond flour/maple sugar muffins while he was working, but you should have seen the look on his face at the end when I offered him some.

They’re still getting the pricing on those roof panels.

Yeah, I said, yesterday’s bomb cyclone definitely did not improve them.

He chuckled.

There’s another atmospheric river on the way next week.