Our story so far: The display kitchen cabinets we found on Craig’s List for an incredible price to install in the church we were converting were a Rubik’s Cube without instructions. 

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That’s the problem with doing it the way we did. We had a lot of jerry-rigging to do.

When a regular homeowner purchases a custom kitchen, someone comes to measure everything, draws up plans with illustrations and sends instructions to the installer. We measured, more than once, but our installation prep ended there. Which left of a lot of loose ends:

• We switched cabinets on either side of the sink so the wine rack would face the beverage bar.
• We ended up with a leftover drawer. You-Can-Call-Me-Al noted it would fit perfectly on the floor beneath the wine rack. It would be perfect for wine corks.
• We eliminated the shelves and drawers and moved the glass-fronted cabinets to either side of the stove. The cream-colored shelves were moved to the blue beverage bar, so they required painting.
• We shortened the tongue of the island and added cupboard doors so we could use the storage space. When cabinet doors in the wrong color arrived, our painter Low Talker spray painted them, and I glazed them. Ditto for the cupboard above the refrigerator.
• I painted yards of kick plate and quarter round to match both the cream-colored cabinets and the blue ones.
• We planned for a wider stove than in the display kitchen making the stove vent obsolete. Fortunately, we acquired a different one. But it was brown. We couldn’t decide if we wanted to leave it or paint it.

Oh, the stove vent. What a deal.

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Today’s headline is a quote from 20th century novelist Zelda Fitzgerald and wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Tomorrow: Penny wise and pound foolish. Read about our folly here.