The Big One

The kitchen is not bad.

Sure the countertops and cabinets are a little dated, and I'm not necessarily in love with the green on white on cream color scheme. But it is a fairly large kitchen for an older home and it has a nice wall oven and huge pantry (don't worry, we'll be covering the multi-colored paint and replacing the door). The ceramic tile is OK, but--as you read in Joe's previous post--we plan to explore the possibility of ripping it up to expose the hardwood floors and restore them to their original glory. A complete kitchen overhaul is definitely in the longer-term plans for the house. But, for now, a little bit of paint and some new cabinet hardware will make it work. Except for two little problems: the cooktop doesn't work and there's no refrigerator.

So, honestly, the kitchen is almost completely non-workable as it stands. When we go to the house to work, we usually bring a cooler and fill it with ice to keep drinks and Max's food cold. Then we order pizza or go get Subway (and have nowhere to keep leftovers). We decided it would definitely be more convenient and probably better for our health if we had a place to keep food cool. So we needed to buy a refrigerator. And we can't really move in without a cook top, so we figured we needed to buy that, too. But what's a couple to do when they have two mortgages and one member of said couple makes a paltry salary as a grad student/teaching assistant? We opened up the Sunday paper, and it was like God had answered our prayers...
Nebraska Furniture Mart was having its biggest sale of the year! And better yet, they were offering no interest financing for 24 months AND free delivery on appliances! So we did what any young American couple would do and we went out and bought a bunch of stuff that we couldn't afford on credit.

We were automatically approved!

So, our lowest-price of the year, no interest until December 2009, free-delivery Jenn Air downdraft gas cooktop and Whirlpool stainless steel refrigerator should be arriving sometime December 6. In the meantime, we'll be running a gas line to the kitchen and praying that the new cooktop fits into the old cutout. Oh yeah--and we bought a couple of ceiling fans to replace the dated gold ones in the living room and parlor (why not, they're interest free until 2009!), so we'll be trying our hands at ceiling-fan installation, too.