A Weekend with Friends

It was a wet weekend here in Maine, but I managed to escape. This weekend, Dan and I traveled to western Massachusetts to visit my best friend, Holly. We had a great visit, and picked an excellent weekend to travel. When we arrived home, we found we’d had over 2 1/2 inches of rain between 3:30 pm Friday and 6 pm Sunday. We left the chickens, cats and dog in the capable hands of neighbor boy John, who perservered despite the wet weather to walk Fishy and make sure the chickens were ok (thanks John!). Of course, the pets had been starved for attention, so here's Ocho, helping me update the blog.

Holly and I met over 20 years ago (gulp!) in college, and became lifelong friends –referring to ourselves as twin daughters of different mothers (who are distantly related but don’t know it.) Holly recently remodeled her kitchen --truth be told, created a real kitchen from her former (and I'm being generous) kitchenette. As a long distance consultant, naturally I had to go and see the end result, which was fabulous.

Holly and her partner Dave saved costs by doing some of the demo work themselves, stripping and refinishing the old woodwork, painting the walls, and removing the old vinyl flooring. One of the unexpected bonuses was the discovery that the subfloor was unfinished maple, so she and Dave rented a floor sander and refinished the floor, too, which turned out beautifully. Holly had chosen maple beadboard cabinets in a natural finish, wanting light colored cabinets to make the small space feel larger, and amazingly, the floor matches the cabinets. For wall paint, she chose a candy apple red, and a bright spring green. They look great together, and really bring out the cabinetry and woodwork. The whole kitchen looks fabulous! YAY Holly, you deserve it!