Here I am Stimulating the Economies

This summer has been especially amazing weather wise so the last two days of rain have not bothered me that much after last summers debacle of a season. It was actually nice to wear a long sleeve shirt in the cool misty air for once. Still, hoping for some better weather by the weekend.

Stuff You Should Read
I am short on time this evening so here are some items I think are worth a look if you want some real content.

-Interfluidity offers his take on the Treasury meeting with bloggers.

-EconomPic has a great post up relating mortgage rates and home prices. My favorite line:

While I am not claiming that prices will fall off another cliff soon, there is a significant risk of a further decline... especially if rates don't stay this low (for this reason I do expect rates to stay this low).

I have to admit I was wrong about how hard the Fed would push to keep rates lows and wrong about how willing the markets seem to play "stocks say economic recovery, but bonds say collapse, let's just keep going!".

-Illusion of Prosperity updates the "Cartoon Physics" graphs and the results are almost creepy in predictive value.

-Zero Hedge had this item titled "Gene Noser's 5 Suggestions On How To Regain Our Market Back From The Robots" which I though may fit in with our robotics discussions here, but it was just about algos.

-There is no bond bubble and debt markets are not being saturated with liquidity. In this way 100 year corporate bonds make perfect sense.

Here I am Stimulating the Economies
I did my consumer zombie part and stimulated the economy. Our kitchen was all original and while that would be great if it was a classic corvette or something, it was not working out for me as a room in the house.

You may wonder why a "doom and gloomer" would do such a thing? Why "waste" money? Why not buy gold and toilet paper? Well, the kitchen was almost unusable space; the cabinets did not even close anymore; I was sick of it. I had the cash to pay for this set aside for over a year but the designer we worked with last year was a total flake so we stopped the planning last go around. We will also not be going anywhere unless I win the lotto and retire to the Bahamas so this is not a trick to try and jack up a resale value. This was just for the wife and I.

That said, we kept withing a budget and did not over improve the kitchen. A basic overall was the plan and other than falling in love with a silly expensive granite, we kept things pretty tame cost wise. We gained so much space by dumping the monster wall cabinets the room seems twice as big now. All in all I am very pleased.

On to the visuals! I will try to keep the pictures grouped before/after in about the same shot to make it easier to visualize. Please note that my Pug dog is a camera ham and if we are taking pictures he tries to get into the shot.

Coming in to the kitchen from the hallway you could see the huge in wall electric oven. I hate electric ovens and wished for a real gas range. Here is the look before:

So what we did was move the refrigerator into the newly enlarged area where the old oven/microwave was. With the monster cabinets gone we were able to make a little alcove station for the new microwave and a nifty butcher block counter:


Here is the sink area and counter with a huge closet cabinet before:

Here is the new counter area and new sink/faucet:

The old cooktop gas burners (I hated these things!):

Brand new oven area with an awesome gas LG Range:

I have already used the oven twice and I am in love!

The fridge used to be on the opposite side of the room (hello pug!):

You can also see the crappy linoleum floors here. Another before picture of the corner:

Now this entire corner is one of those revolving "lazy susan's" . How did they get that name anyways?

Here is the huge wall of cabinets that ate up all the space in the room (Pug alert bottom right!):

And now the open wall after with new heater line:

The wife found the artwork I have dubbed "Ode to Pug". You can see the new floors here as well. Great cost saving tip, skip the tile! Here in New England the winter makes a tile floor not much fun when the cold sets in. This floor is a composite interlocking tile that is free floating so it stays warmer in the winter. Very cost effective as well!

Here is another shot of the granite we liked; thing is there is no more of it as the quarry from where it came started giving up stone that looked much different. We lucked out that someone cancelled their order for the slab we ended up with:


More space and much better functionality. Just what a scientist needs!

Still some things to finish up on:
-The main light does not fit the room anymore so I await the wife selecting a new one any day now (good thing she does not read my blog!).
-The trim around the window and doors as well as the garage door does not match the new cabinets. As I love to stain wood and make mitre cuts myself I will remedy this when the summer is over.

There will be other little things but I am pretty happy with the end result. Awaiting the final bill in the mail any day.....

Have a good night.