The kitchen isn’t complete, but hopefully Mauro will finish up this morning. (We’re waiting for him now.)

He needs to finish the spice rack (a skinny pull-out to hold our array of spices). He’ll add a door to the corner cabinet, put the doors on a narrow tip-down door under the sink for a scouring pad, etc., adjust some too tight shelves and insert in a missing shelf. Then the hardware (handles) need to be added (22 in all).

John is going to add shelves over the microwave and refrigerator (since Mauro hadn’t included the price of those in his original bid and would have added about $200 to the amount he charged us.) John is also finishing up the painting of the kitchen wall toward the guest bathroom. That one wall will be a milk chocolate color and will accent the lighter sand colored walls in the rest of the kitchen/dining and great room.

We still need to get the stuff put back in all the cupboards. Right now most of the dishes and glassware have been put in them but the top two shelves in all of the cabinets are totally empty. The added shelves really gave us a lot of additional storage area which I hope will take a lot of time to fill. And when John gets the old cabinets installed in the office, we’ll have even more places to stow our stuff.

I don’t want to accumulate things we don’t use, but we, or more accurately I, want to do more entertaining down here. Our social life in Michigan in is almost non-existent. When we entertain in Michigan, it’s at festivals and very casual. I’d like to bring some of our stuff down here so we can host our Florida friends more easily. We have very few serving pieces.

When the kitchen is complete and the wall painted, I’ll post before and after pictures. We feel it’s really a nice improvement; a totally different look. Yes, there’s more to be done in other areas of the condo, but little by little we’ll get the place the way we want it. Next year flooring and maybe counter tops.