For those of you who have been loyal readers, you’ve noticed a bit of a departure from our normal political discussions here. This is because I’ve been fully immersed in remodeling my kitchen. Don’t worry — we’ll soon return to exclusively politics.

Today I passed inspections for the header which carries the load where the support wall between my kitchen and living room used to be. I also passed both the electric and the plumbing inspection.

There were two concerns of the inspector though — specifically where will the range hood be vented since it is normally roughed in by the inspection and I have this overhang in the back of the kitchen which was never properly headered. That’s not a crisis but since we’re planning on putting a patio door in that opening, I need to put a 5.5 inch microlamb over an 8 foot section. Fortunately it’s a fairly easy thing to do.

This pushes back the job what will probably be about a week while I await the arrival of the hood and I order the microllam. I don’t want to put these two things in before the drywaller gets here because then I would have to rip out the drywall to show the inspector.

I’m now approaching this project from a different perspective — specifically with the expectation that things will go wrong.

I was anticipating saving $800 by having my carpenter install my cabinets. Lowe’s charged $800 more than the carpenter. But if I do that, I’ll pay $760 more in taxes because installed home improvements are not taxed whereas if I just buy the cabinets, they’re taxable. That eliminates any benefit of having someone besides Lowe’s install my cabinets, especially since I won’t have warranted work if Lowe’s doesn’t do the install.

We’re eating out a lot and dealing with a toaster oven and microwave. It’s an interesting way to function but it will all be worth it when it’s done.