All day

Today, I have been offline, in the real world not online, not in the blogosphere. I missed the online world. I was thinking of getting a Blackberry or a Sidekick, but then a friend told me how addicted I would be. It's true. I would be. I would be able to do almost everything from that little device. I would never be offline ever again. You should vote in my comments as to whether I should take the plunge to always be online or not. It would have come in handy today, but does it make sense to "get away from" technology once in a while?

Anyway, today my wonderful husband (MWH) and I went to pick out and buy the appliances for our new kitchen. We're happy with things. It wasn't too painful. It cost less than we originally priced appliances to be so that's always nice. The big savings came from not getting a "built-in" refrigerator. We were going to get a built-in 42-inch refrigerator, but as we looked more closely at it, we decided to go with the 36-inch "standard" kind. It's got the same amount of cubic space inside.... It's not as "cool" looking as the built-in, but it does seem more functional and it's almost half the price. We also figured out what we could do to make the cabinets look better around it. We could have spent the extra money, on the built-in, but it just didn't seem worth it. He and I are both somewhat frugal. We like what we got. We won't have a "snob appeal" kitchen, but we are happy. He and I agree and that's the important thing.

If I were a "real writer" I'd tell you all about the appliance store we went to, and how it was like stepping into a 1950's era store. It was surreal. It was totally not in the culture of the rest of where we live. However, I'm not a real writer so you'll just have to trust me. Our salesman was a really nice guy, but he too was trapped in a time-warp.

The remodel on our new house is coming along nicely. The construction is almost finishing up it's 3rd week. We are remodeling most of the first floor (main level with kitchen, dining room, master bedroom & bath, guest bathroom). I'm very excited about it all! We're adding a walk-in closet to our bedroom (taking some "unused space" that is kind of a large hallway between the dining room and the kitchen). It's hard to explain. I'll have to scan the plans in someday. I'm too lazy to try to think of all the words I need to explain this.

In addition to adding a walk-in closet, we re-designed the space in our bedroom so we'll have a little sitting area, a large shower, a new entry door, and more counter space in the bathroom. We're also totally re-doing the kitchen. Right now, it's completely empty in there. It's so thrilling to walk through the empty space and imagine the potential. (Though we actually have the design for the space done.)

So we bought our appliances for the kitchen, have our cabinets designed and the wood picked. The cabinet maker has taken measurements. We bought a shower pan for our new shower in our master bathroom... I think we've picked out the type of wood we'll have on the floor throughout the entire main floor (we did that a couple of weeks ago). (Note on that link, it's not where we're getting our wood from, I just liked the picture... Here's another picture of the same wood (top left picture).

We still have to pick out the tile for our bathroom floor, shower and our countertop. We may also need to pick out the kind of wood for the bathroom cabinets. We also have to pick out tile/stone for our fireplace, a new banister, kids bathroom stuff... I think I've also decided what I want to do for the kid's bedroom as far as 3 beds... Now I just have to figure out if it exists or if we hire someone to build it.

Today was an all day endeavor. I'm imagining I should allocate 1 full-day a week to this sort of house thing for the next few weeks. It's hard for me not to work or get twitchy when I'm not online. Perhaps this will be "good for me."