Furniture accomplished

Gah, long day yesterday. Yesterday was my day of "get kitchen furniture in order come hell or highwater, God damn it," and God damn it, I got it done. On Monday night my kitchen cart came in, and Jared and Charlotte so graciously put it together for me while I was cooking dinner. Monday was a really good day; Charlotte and Frances came over to Elsinore to have a little body-painting party, followed by dinner. Charlotte did a beautiful design on my lower back and on Frances's arm and shoulder. And to make things even better, beforehand she gave me one of the nicest massages I have ever had. I'll have to ask her in more detail exactly what she did, because it was fantastic. And while Frances and I made a dinner of pesto pasta and ratatouille, she and Jared undertook the surprisingly complex task of putting together the cart. How lucky I am to have such helpful, capable friends. :-) I really like the cart, too; it rolls smoothly, has a good-sized cabinet for storage, and is a perfect height to use as extra counterspace.

As for yesterday, I managed to make agreements with two sellers on Craigslist to pick up a replacement for the kitchen table and a replacement for the pantry shelf. Mission accomplished, but not easily. It involved lots of driving, more than I'd expected because on the first run neither of my two GPS devices could find the address. So that involved lots of fighting back and forth around one-way streets in Cambridge and lots of awkward calling of the seller trying to get to an address that neither my phone device or my car device recognized the existence of. But I managed to secure an item known as a chef's or baker's rack. I started looking for one as a replacement for the shelf-as-pantry we've got going on right now after seeing one in Matt and Lise's kitchen on Sunday, and very quickly I found one. I like it because it combines shelf space with a metal mesh backsplash you can use to hang things on. I've always kind of disliked the old pantry shelf; as Jared once put it, "It's a lot less kitchen than it is garage." I'll be glad to have a nicer, more versatile piece as a replacement. Though it occurs to me I'll need to buy some hooks if I want to start hanging stuff.

Getting the table didn't turn out to be too bad, and the seller was extremely helpful in getting it loaded into my car and making sure everything was set. The table is pretty similar to the one that was there, except it has a little drawer in one end. We removed the legs and it slid into the back of my car just fine. Though the table was all I really wanted, he said it came with four chairs at no extra charge. The chairs are not excessively nice, they are a bit worn and the white paint is flaking off, but I took them anyway just in case I can fix them up. They would probably be perfectly fine if they had a new coat of paint. Maybe I could sand them down and stain them. That will be a project for this summer, I think. And so I accomplished two fairly significant furniture pieces, all without spending a ton of money. Not bad.

After all of that, I was pretty exhausted, especially since I hadn't eaten all day and my back was stiff from so much time in the car. But still, I managed to get them unloaded at the house. They're not really set up yet, as the table needs to be reassembled and their predessors are still taking up their intended space, but I'm proud of getting it done. As I said, I will feel really good about everything when the place is finally all set up and ready to be used.