rtstarr

Wednesday:

Goals: Shop for concrete tile backerboard (wonderboard), tile setting tools, set up appointment for kitchen countertop, pack, gather tax information.

Today was a day away from ole' Weezie. Well, not really. I left work early to meet Rena over there because the new appliances were being delivered at 4:30ish. I wanted to take a look at the fridge to make absolutely sure it would fit with tile underneath. It's a pretty tight fit. I get there, and Rena has everything under control. It looks as though everything will fit perfectly. So we head out to get some dinner and to get our shop-on.

We have some tasty Crocodile Cafe, actually going out to eat instead of eating on the floor of the townhouse like we have been for the last 3 weeks. Our good friend Erick (whose band "Star Off Machine" is pretty kick ass) is working and tells us that our other friend that works there (Josh) just got a gig being the host of some new show on FX. Pretty good news all around. But again, having nothing to do with our townhouse. Actually, that’s not entirely true. He offered to help us move. For some reason, we've had just about everybody we know offer to help us move. That really says alot, because most of these people have seen our current place and realize how much crap we have. Still, it's a good feeling to have so many people care enough to offer. But anyway, we have already hired movers to get us out of dodge.

So we end up spending 3 hours at Home Depot looking at countertops. Our shopping choices were basically the big home improvements stores or the random take your money and run tile places in North Hollywood. I'm the kind of person who likes a showroom and maybe a salesperson who doesn't look like he 50% wants to rob you and 50% wants to stab you in the eye with a jagged piece of travertine.

So we opted for the big box store.

We ended up choosing Silestone, or Zodiac for our counter surface. Both are just brand names for quartz. I know the granite is the "in" countertop right now in Cali, but we feel that that trend is fast approaching its end, and is like sooooo 2 1/2 years ago. Is that California enough for you? For the record, I have never liked granite. I don't care for most of the color combinations or the patterns in the stone (looks like puke splatters to me). We are both more minimalist when it comes to such things, so the quartz works out well. Most of the patterns are more solid than granite, and the colors are more industrial looking. Plus it is more durable than most other countertops, so that is a bonus as far as Rena's cooking requirements.

Anyway, back to the HomeDepot. We try to gather all of the tools and things for the installation of the tile, look at their tile, look at kitchen sink faucets, and talk to a HD minion about countertops (they sell the Silestone there). I am not certain if this girl had ever been in a kitchen, or had even the slightest idea what a countertop was, but it didn't stop her from taking our order. We couldn't find the color we wanted, and for some reason they don't have samples of all the colors nor could she browse the web for us to look.

This is another side rant: Attention companies, I search the web before/after/ and while shopping. Please make all of your products available, and for you other business who don't even have a website...I'm sorry, but I won't be using your services.

So we finally get Wanda the Quartz Queen to process our order which allows a countertop jockey to come out and measure the business end of our kitchen. It's a hundred bucks for this service, and you pay when you check out. We still couldn't find the color we wanted and were becoming frustrated with each other because we both thought this had been decided weeks ago. We both had decided on a concrete-like gray color. They had one that was similar, but didn't have the speckly sparkly stuff that was in the one we liked. All of a sudden, Rena starts saying that we picked out some white one that looked nothing like what we had picked out originally. This of course makes me scratch my head, chalk it up to her being insane and forces me to become pushy with the color that we originally picked out. We become a little snappy at each other in front of the Home Depot Girl, but I think she was too busy looking up "kitchen countertops" on Wikipedia to notice.

Anyway, we finally realized that we were looking at the problem from two different angles. I had the color right and Rena was correct on the sparklyness of the stone. The stone that we liked the most was actually a Zodiaq, available only at Lowes. So we end our 3 hour adventure at the H.D., and head to the L.O.W.E.S.

We only have to wait for 45 minutes at the Lowes behind a typical annoying Californian family buying a new kitchen....metro-sexual, be-stubbled father, anorexic, hyperactive, do-rag wearing, granola snorting, psychopath mom, two Tommy Hilfiger wearing precocious rugrats named Jedediah and Tierra....and a poor grandmother who appeared as if she had just stepped off the mule train from Iowa and had a look on her face that said "I can't believe any of this spawned from my loins". I truly felt sorry for the woman.

We eventually got the countertop guy to give us our forms and we set it up to be measured on Monday. We high tailed it out of there and dropped everything off at the new place and went home to crash.

Mood: Hating the world...I still need to do my damn taxes. It is at this point of the year when I hate being a contractor.