We only had about a day and a half working at M.T. Acres this week and Tina was definitely the star of the show this week!

First, her appliances were finally delivered Friday.  (That is only 3 weeks later than they said they would be delivered. – Which was 2 weeks later than I asked them to be delivered.)  The delay did not really slow us down much, I just wanted to have the actual appliances when I was building the base cabinets to verify they would fit.

The cooktop and range hood are in the 2 boxes.  I was too afraid to test fit the cooktop into its cabinet as that is the one I most concerned about.  But I will have to do that next week.

Tina decided to take on laying the floor “tile” in the shower of the master bathroom.

Rather than using traditional tile, we went with river rock.  They took actual river rocks and sliced them about 3/8″ thick.  Since the rocks are too small to be easily cut with a tile saw, they have to be laid out by hand fitting smaller rocks into the gaps.  It is a very tedious process.

Once she got them all laid out, she carefully took them out and put them on black plastic in the exact way she laid them out.

Then she put down a really heavy layer of thinset and set them back in.

Because they are natural stone, they had to be sealed before grouting.  So she put 2 coats of the sealer on today.  The sealer makes them look wet all the time.  They came out looking incredibly nice!

Because she had to put down such a thick layer of thinset, some of the thinset squeezed up between the rocks.  So we might have to chip some of that out before she grouts it.  But that is not too big of a deal and it really looks sharp.

For my part, I did a lot of busy work this weekend.

I started by finishing up the carcass for the kitchen island.

While the glue was drying on the carcass, I made the corner mouldings for it.

Then I made the face frame and got it and the mouldings glued onto the cabinet.

While that was drying, I decided to hang a couple more finished cabinets in the kitchen and see if the refrigerator fit.

It fit perfect with about 1/2 inch to spare!

By then the kitchen island was dry so we brought it in and test fit it with the electric wires.

Perfect fit!

We also finally got the hardware from the builder to be able to hang the pocket door on the master bedroom closet after asking for them for about 3 months.

I bought the door from Homely Despot about 3 months ago and never even opened the box to look at it.  I wish I had because I would have taken it back.  The veneer is about as thick as a sheet of paper and the core of the door is made of genuine cardboard!

The veneer is so thin that even cutting it with a razor sharp bench chisel, it still peels up.

Hopefully, Tina can clean that up a little bit when she varnishes it, but if not, oh well.  The door is going to be open 99% of the time anyway so it will not show.

The little bit of actual wood that was part of the door was also all split.  So we spent close to an hour putting glue in the splits with a toothpick and clamping it together.

All in all, I am pretty unhappy with Homely Despot and will not buying anything more from them if I can possibly avoid it.

Lastly, for ages men have wondered: “How did cats learn to make that ‘meow’ noise”?

Answer: By running them through a bandsaw!