Macro progess

 

We finally have a microwave, over the range. that is beautiful and that works!  It was quite the ordeal.  We tried to take the old one down ourselves, which was supposed to be easy.  I asked people, I googled videos, looked up how-tos, the whole nine...but as I say, our life is not so bland around here.  Sometimes that means things are complicated;)

We started taking down the thing...here is Dave helping out...and then we realized that the screws hold the old microwave up were behind that little yellow wall right by Dave's hand.

So that meant...

We had to demo that wall.  You can see we also caused some damage to the microwave.  There were a lot of screws and we took out a lot of them before we realized that we needed to demo the wall.  The microwave was broken anyways, so no more harm done.  Remember to turn the power off when you do stuff like this.

See those long screws up there?  Yeah, they are hanging from up in our ceiling.  This is where we knew we were in over our heads.  We tried unscrewing from the bottom, but nothing we did worked.
 

What idiot built our kitchen like this?  Why not put cabinets up there?

Meanwhile, the dingy counter-wave is over there mocking and laughing at us the whole time...stealing all that counter space.  Dumb.

We ended up hiring a contractor to come help us.  I am an avid DIYer, but sometimes I run into things, like this, and think "I need someone to do this right!"  We paid a guy $150 to take the old one down, and figure out a way to put the new one up without punching through the ceiling.  Apparently it was way complicated.  Of course!

The puzzle of this whole thing only stumped him a few times, and he had to run to Home D once, but he did a great job!

Isn't it lovely?  Besides the hole up there...

Look at all that counter space I have back!!!  I was so happy, I was motivated to hang some art from our Europe trip.

These two little pictures are from a store in Florence where this sweet older man hand painted everything.  Aren't they sweet?

This round thing is actually a place mat from one of my favorite restaurants from our trip.  It was called Verrazzano and the owner, Jonathan, was so crazy and delightful and chose our whole meal for us and it was perfect.  I asked him if I could have the mat and he let me, I thought it was really pretty.

This is cork art that we bought in a sweet little store on Plaza Anfiteatro in Lucca, Italy.  The colors are perfect for the kitchen!

Lastly, that plaque above the stove is a hand painted beauty that we bought in this little town we drove through when we were wine tasting in Tuscany.  It's a landscape painting of Tuscany.  Its so pretty!

So, that is our adventure with the microwave so far.  Now we need to cover up that darn hole above it.  Mom has some good ideas, so I'll update soon on that;)

I can't believe the weekend is over!!