Pipe dreams

I drove to work today because Walt needed some time to work on the new apartment -- which meant that I needed to drop Devon off at daycare (and since the daycare starts at 8am and the latest bullet train leaves at 8:11am on the other side of the city, it was a driving day for me). On the way home, after I picked Devon up, I went by to get Walt. He had spent part of the afternoon cutting a large hole in the kitchen ceiling to install a hood for the range. When we went up there, the apartment was actually looking pretty good. The drywall guys had been there for the last two days, and the place finally started to look like somewhere I might want to live; a few days ago each room had at least 10-15 holes carved in the wall for electricity, etc. and it looked like a complete dump. Now it just looks like a halfway house or a place where squatters might be tempted to take up residence.

Devon and I went to the room that is eventually going to be her bedroom. Since we've been working furiously on this renovation, we've been spending a lot of time with construction items in hand like measuring tapes, hammers, etc. Devon loves all of this stuff, especially the measuring tape. There also happened to be some metal pipe on the floor, part of the hood installation project (which is still in process -- especially since I've been dithering wildly on the stove. A momentary diversion here: I have real lust in my heart for a pro-style residential range like a Thermador, Viking or DCS. And in fact from a looks-perspective I love the fancy gas Thermador with the analog dial -- ummm. However, I'm horrorified that I'm even contemplating spending $5000 on a stove. That is 5x the cost of our current car! But nonetheless, I hear the siren call of stainless steel and 15,000 BTUs. On the other hand, my original idea was to keep with a period kitchen and get one of those old Wedgewoods -- they're fabulous looking and certainly can't cook any worse than my current 20" apartment stove. I got so far down this path that I actually bought this amazing 1930s Wedgewood from a woman in Santa Rosa and hauled the damn thing all the way down here; but now Walt thinks the oven on this is far too small and if we get a Wedgewood we need to get something more current, like the 1950s stye. I, ever a sucker for looks, just love this 1930s one -- and how fabulous would it be to have a 1926 building with the original cabinets -- at least one wall of them -- plus a period stove? But anyway, dithering on this has had a huge impact on all of the other kitchen details because the old stoves are wider than current stoves, and all of that impacts cabinets, hoods, etc. not to mention pocketbooks).

Now back to the original comment...so we go into Devon's future bedroom and two delightful treasures appear: a measuring tape and a length of metal pipe/vent for the hood project. She immediately grabbed the measuring tape, and with a little help from us, started "measuring" the window, as you can see. She doesn't know the name "measuring tape," so she just started yelling, "Ai! Ai!" and gesturing towards it wildly. She was also quite thrilled about the pipe, probably because it made a lot of noise when kicked or rolled, and it has the added advantage of being a unique hide and seek vehicle. She had a grand time playing with these items before we rushed back to Glover St. for dinner.