As you take in these now same-ish looking pix of the kitchen in motion you might notice a hole next to the imaginary sink, where soon will be in place our much dreamt of glories of glories, a built-in automatic dishwasher.

We never had dishwashers growing up, MB and I. Ours was the way of hot water and suds, dishpan hands and all that. Since adulthood we've been spoiled though, at least until we moved here to Palazzo Dilapidato. No dishwasher was ever installed here, such gross decadance not at all in keeping with taste of the former proprietors, but when we moved in I found a used portable dishwasher to do the job. That's one of those deals where you roll it across the floor, squeeze the valve up onto your faucet, turn the hot water on full blast and then get big squirts up your nostrils when you didn't do it right.

It's been a fairly wonderful device actually, doing a great job and being pretty easy to use. But the noise the thing makes is unbelieveable, really rather like the Who at Leeds in 1969. Having to wait it out so one can turn off the water at the end of the cycle is not much fun either.

Anyway, here comes a shiny new one, to be built-in and everything. This really is no kidding the main reason we are finally doing our kitchen, so we can walk away from the dishwasher... And therein hangs one more small tale. Small digression: are you as tired as I am of being polled for customer satisfaction at every turn? It seems that no matter where you go or what you want to do someone is always asking how great it was or wasn't to use/eat/visit/live through their whatever. Response rates to these endless polls has gotten so low that companies have resorted to bribes, like sweepstakes and drawings if only you will give them a grade, any grade.

Well I'm here to tell you, gentle reader, that it might be worth your while to keep on giving them what they want.

About a year ago I was asked and at a moment of weakness agreed to give Best Buy some feedback on delivery of a fridge. Of course I forgot all about it until about four months later when a plain envelope arrived from Best Buy with no accompanying note, merely a gift card for $500. This is what's paying for our faboo new built-in shiny etc dishwasher.

Best Buy being Best Buy and Ithaca being Ithaca, of course the local store didn't have much on hand to offer. They had about a half dozen models of dishwashers, either really low end (buy em for your rental) stuff or super expensive whizz bang models. Nothing to speak of in the middle. So we found what we wanted from their website, and a mere six weeks later, if the gods of freight and commerce smile upon us, we should have safely nestled in the bosom of our home one more little labor saving slave to our consumer desire...

Things are moving right along with Super Kitchen Reno 2008. It's exciting to come home each day and see what has changed since we left in the morning. Of course that makes me all the more anxious to have it finished, but it's all part of the process.

Just a short post tonight to show some progress. The guys are doing a great job, as you can see things are moving right along. All of the lower cabinets have been installed. Wiring has been put in for lighting above the sink and for a switch to the existing ceiling fan/light. We weren't overly surprised to learn that there's nearly a three inch differential from the highest point of the kitchen floor to the lowest. Long time readers may recall that we had foundation work done about a year ago, under this area of the house. However, had that work included any further raising or attempted leveling, it would have potentially put the windows in this area out of alignment or just flat out broken them. We're very happy with the progress so far.

Chris here, just chiming in as this newest in our ever lengthening list of house projects moves along. Many folks would have started with the kitchen instead of waiting so long to fix up what is of course the center of the household, but one thing after another made us delay getting moving with "the big one".

For one thing, a while back MB found online a reality TV show in search of awful kitchens, whose colorful owners would in theory illuminate for the cameras the tackiness or downright horror of their space in entertaining/humiliating fashion. We were so ready for that possibility, of course we applied for an open spot, with snapshots and snappy bios etc. The reward for enduring minor instant fame was to be a remodeled cucina, sounds wonderful as long as you can put up with the kooky aesthetic of the doubtless photogenic designer... Anyway, never heard from them, but the lingering potential of a call from TV heaven made an excellent excuse for not doing anything.

Other excuses piled on as well, but the happy coincidence of what looked like a GREAT contractor coupled with a teensy increase in available funds made us jump right long about now.

We are not doing anything major in structural terms... although we probably should. We are replacing cabinets, counter and floor and that's about it.

So there you are, as you and we shall see...

More kitchen demolition pictures. I wonder what's with that doorbell button above the radiator?

Ah, I love the smell of drywall dust in the morning. This is the "it's got to get worse before it gets better" stage of renovation. As you can see from the pictures, demolition has begun. We are now effectively without a kitchen. Luckily the refrigerator is still accessible and running. The cabinets and flooring have been removed revealing many different styles of wallpaper and interesting, almost appealing blue linoleum flooring on top of medium width pine floor planks. The contractors are fabulous - nice guys and they sweep up after themselves so nicely!

The time has come to remodel the kitchen. As you can see, it has a certain vintage theme to it that is really not to our taste. We've replaced the circa 1950's refrigerator and the stove whose door didn't close all the way.

New cabinets, countertop, and dishwasher are on the way. We will bid farewell to the brick patterned vinyl flooring, the floral wallpaper, the PA speaker in the corner and possibly our sanity...