We hope that by Friday the remodel will be done (except for the countertops, more on that later). This morning I painted two walls in the garage. It looked like this before:

Those weird patches on the wall are from old water damage. The washer and dryer will live in the garage and the blue and beige on the walls was sort of depressing. White is better:

The paper towel dispenser on the wall is from the previous owner and we'll leave it up unless mom and Christy want it down. It's pretty handy.

I painted baseboards this afternoon. I hate painting trim and there's more to do tomorrow. Oh well. My friend Karen lined cabinets and drawers in the kitchen with shelf liner (thanks, Karen!). The new refrigerator was delivered. They had to take off the front door to get it inside:

It feels a little big but it's the same size as the one that was there before. We just got used to that space being empty. It'll feel normal in a while.

Steve spent a good part of the morning on the tablesaw. He turned it on and it didn't start. It's now in the shop. He needed the tablesaw to cut a piece of lumber to put under the kitchen sink. There was old water damage there, the wood was warped and the plies were de-laminating. And it was sticky. So he cut out the old shelf. He then over-engineered (his words) the base for a new shelf:

And then he screwed in the new shelf:

This is way better.

So… the countertops – kitchen and bathrooms. We ordered them from Lowe's 4 weeks ago. They are made by LG and should be very nice. Lowe's contracts them from a place in Dallas. We paid for them 4 weeks ago. The guys came out to make a template for the countertops a week later. Wouldn't you think that when they have your money and have the template made that they would get moving? Nope, they didn't.

Last Thursday I got a call that the final measurements showed we would get money back and would I please come in and sign new papers so they could order the materials!!! My head almost exploded. I was very cranky in as nice a way as I could stand. They are moving as fast as they can but it will be at least 2 weeks before the countertops are in. Mom and Christy could move in this weekend except they can't because there are no counters or sinks.

If we had been told the actual timeline up front we could have planned for it. Instead we were given the best case, rosy timeline. Usually I am very happy with Lowe's. Goodness knows they have gotten a lot of our money over the years. But this they could have handled better. There's a Home Depot a bit farther down the road and it may be that we visit them more often.

Tomorrow I'm finishing the painting, Steve is hanging light fixtures and changing switches. I'll help a bit with that. I also need to install the pull out drawers on the bottom shelves in the kitchen and line the cabinets and drawers in the bathrooms. This stuff will probably spill over into Friday. Two more days!