much accomplished

It takes a lot of time to shuffle furniture around on a hardwood floor, especially when you're short-handed. Luckily, my brother Sean showed up to collect his dog Maqz, and he consented (Sean, that is, not Maqz) to help us move some major pieces of furniture-- two dressers-- out of the new dining room and back into one of the bedrooms, then slap felt protectors on the dressers' feet and push those behemoths into place. With the major pieces out of the way, Dad and I were able to wrestle a box spring from the dining room to the downstairs, and I cleared out most of the living room. The dining room currently stands empty; the living room is empty except for a large, extremely heavy TV.

The second half of today's labor involved emptying out the kitchen tent outside, bringing in all the cooking-related items and placing them in the kitchen for Mom to sort out. That took several hours. Mom hasn't gone through any of the boxes yet, but she will in the morning, when the renovation crew makes its appearance.

That's right: the renovation crew will be back tomorrow; Dad will be working with them on finishing up the deck, and the crew will be installing more bedroom lights. We also hope they'll be connecting the plumbing to the kitchen units, i.e., the sink/garbage disposal, the sink's soap dispenser, the dishwasher, and the fridge, which has both a water dispenser and icemaking unit. That would effectively reactivate the kitchen. It still needs its backsplash tile, but otherwise, it's done, and I have to admit it's quite a sight, especially at night.

Unfortunately, all is not bliss. The dishwasher presents us with an interesting conundrum, one not of our making. The Mongolian guys who brought in our new countertops did a superb job of measuring, cutting, and fitting, but they seem to have forgotten that the dishwasher's controls are located on the very top of its door, where they stare straight up at the ceiling. The new countertop for the island hangs over juuust enough to cover those controls, making them both invisible and inaccessible to questing fingers. I'm a bit pissed off about this because the crew had a chance to look at the dishwasher when they made their measurements; they should have cut away enough stone to allow our eyes and fingers clear access to the dishwasher's controls.

We're contemplating several ways to get around this, none of which should involve our paying anything. The way I see it, the countertop team is at fault and should correct their mistake. One possibility: drag the dishwasher forward to allow the controls to peek out from under the countertop. The problem, though, is that we can only go forward about an inch before the dishwasher's corner blocks a set of drawers to its left. If the dishwasher is pulled out too far, the drawers won't open.

Second possibility: cut an indentation that's approximately the width of the dishwasher into the countertop. Done sleekly enough, it might not present much of an aesthetic problem, though I can imagine Mom not being happy with that solution. Looks aside, the indentation would provide us the access we require.

Third possibility: cut the same indentation, but on a bias so that we create what will be, in effect, a recess. The surface area of the countertop won't be affected, but we'll have the requisite eye and finger room. The controls won't be visible if one is staring straight down at them, but if one takes a step back, they ought to be visible from a 45-degree angle.

Dad plans to put the problem to Mr. Jeong tomorrow to see if our resourceful Korean renovator can come up with a simpler, more elegant countertop solution than any of the alternatives we've dreamed up.

Tomorrow, I continue the deconstruction of Tarp City. I've also got a finalized Christmas party program, so I can set about writing up my emcee script in the evening. The Korean women's society president is hoping I'll be speaking a good bit of Korean. I'll try, for her sake, but I'll also be spending most of my time in my safe zone, speaking English. I'm not sure the crowd will appreciate too much broken Korean.


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