Fresh picked from our own "Back 40" nearly a quart of juicy blackberries. Of course there would have been more had I not had to "quality test" so many of them. I don't know if it's due to all the rain we've had this year, but these berries are so much better than they were last year. There is probably another quart out there still that are not quite ripe yet. Maybe next week...

...and then there was floor. Although we got a minor whee from the blue linoleum that was revealed when our contractor pulled back the other strata of floor in the kitchen, we nevertheless wanted something a bit more... us... to go with our nifty new cabinetry.

One challenge we had to face in selecting flooring is the somewhat, uh, OK extremely uneven pitch of the floor in this part of the house. It's an addition from sometime in the twentieth century, and believe me when I say the job went to the low bidder. While there really isn't a single right angle in the whole place, the kitchen floor appears to defy the laws of geometry, if not physics.

Which severely limits the choices for flooring. The waves of level in our kitchen rule out slate, tile, wood, pretty much anything that must remain flat. That leaves us with some variant of plastic.

After much searching and grimacing, we found our solution, a commercial flooring from Europe called Karndean. It actually approaches the appearance of something that once grew on a tree. The pix here don't do it justice, but it is really very cool stuff.

Oh no, an entire week has gone by without a post! This is due, in part, to the fact that we've been trying to re-inhabit the kitchen. It is still some distance to full completion, but it's coming along little by little. Flooring is being installed as I type, then a return visit of the contractors will be scheduled to install baseboard, finish crown molding and other final details. Then comes the painting. We've chosen a warm yellow tone for the walls and will do the trim in white.

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.