Curtains, blinds & final week of kitchen prep

Last week, we busied ourselves with some final tasks and errands needing to be done before starting the kitchen.

Ikea cabinets were assembled:

This one received the Pickles Seal Of Approval.

I spent a @#$@$ hour removing this #@$(* chimney from the back of the #@$*#@ stove so that we can get the #@$@@ thing into the @#$)@*#$@ house:

Pickles helped in her usual way, from the garden bed:

And we began moving stuff out of the kitchen cabinets:

After all that, I put up these curtains we had gotten at Ikea while getting the kitchen stuff:

The guy at Ikea forgot to sell us the drain assemblies that go with the new sink, and, of course, the sink requires a hard-to-find size, so Susie very kindly (& bravely) ventured with me to Ikea on Saturday. For the uninitiated, Saturdays in there are like the running of the bulls in Pamplona. We started our adventure by fortifying ourselves with Swedish meatballs at the Ikea cafe (cafe? cafeteria? kafe?):

And, of course, they had exactly one drain assembly in stock (don't forget we need two), and no plans to get any more in the warehouse for another month, so I had to go back to trying to find one online (I did eventually get lucky). Frustrating, but while we were there, I picked up these cordless blinds:

As proof of how great they are, look at how soundly Pickles is sleeping here:

This is Pickles before she got up the next morning. You have seen many, many pictures of her napping during the day, but never one of her before she got up. Usually when I get up, she does, too, but for whatever reason on this day, she just kept on snoozing. Must be the blinds.

Yes, she sleeps on the couch in the bedroom. Mostly isn't interested in sleeping on the human bed. She just prefers the couch.

We also picked up the tile from a place just down the hill (turned out the the tile company had discontinued the tiles we used originally, of course, but we found a pretty decent match -- thank you to Auntie Berta, Auntie Mary, & Mama O'Brien for their input on Plan B!), and got baseboard trim.

Ready to roll!

In other news, last weekend, there was a major fire in the building next to the one where we lived before we moved to Mars. The building where the fire started was completely destroyed, and our old apartment, #31, is too damaged for the tenants to get back into: 

Other neighboring buildings were damaged and destroyed, as well, displacing 40-50 people.

Needless to say, we're feeling very, very lucky right now.