A Full Roster

To say that I wasn't up for yesterday, was an understatement.

Lawrence and I wasted no time jumping into the activity. We made a pilgrimage to Home Depot to get the birch panel the mother settled on for the cabinets (and I thought I wasn't going to have to buy beadboard), a cord for the new stove, and while we were there with Lawrence's truck, the backerboard for the kitchen floor.

The trip, loading and unloading, hooking up the stove AND the new rangehood, ate into the day. So much, so, we got only six cabinets cut. Plus, it also took some time to get set up and for Lawrence to get a feel for how removing the raised panel centers was going to work.

And it was a messy job, too.

Lawrence made a jig to match the approximate width of the inner cabinet frame. He clamped that on top of the cabinet approximately 3/8 inch into the cabinet frame, set the router depth to 1 inch and went to work.

This was repeated for each of three sides. Times six.

That's my buddy, Lawrence, hard at work. Of course, rain was inevitable. (Inevitable because the nearby Catholic church was having its annual parish picnic. EVERY year that picnic has at least one super-soaker. Many years, it is plagued by rain for the whole three days.)

I noticed a black cloud rolling in fast so I went inside to consult the Weather Channel. "There's no rain showing there," says the mother. Though the local weather radar shows we'd either be a direct hit or just get skirted as the storm moved south.

"I trust the Weather Channel more than them," quoth the mother. Well, I trust my eyes more than either one. I started carrying in my backerboard and had planned to grab the birch (almost $40 a sheet, thankuverymuch) when I finished that.

I barely got started though when I came back outside to find Lawrence frantically throwing plastic over the birch. It was beginning to pour.

We threw a trashbag over our work under the tree. Despite the 20-minute rain, more than half of which was a downpour, our work area stayed relatively dry. We were able to resume within 25 minutes and continue to knock out those panels.

The garbage man is really going to love me again this week. I still have all the debris from unwrapping the stove to put out!

We then measured and began cutting pieces from the first of the birch beadboard panels. I can't tell you the joy I felt at watching those middle panels pile up and seeing the new ones take their places!

Now, I still have to actually adhere the new panels. There's still some debate about the best way to do that. And I'm not sure about what supplies I'll need. I may or may not get to that today.

My next order of business is the yard. It's been TWO weeks since it's been cut and it's a mess. And with more rain on the way in just a few short hours, it has to get done. Lucky me.

And since rain is forecast juat about every day next week, I'm not sure when Lawrence will be able to get back to the cabinets. Yes, folks, it's another wet June. I'm not even working on an outside project this time (you might recall last year's brickwork) and Mother Nature is still managing to foul things up.

Bee-och.