Another Project Finished!

And I do hope it's the last one.... seems this house always has something going wrong with it.

Anyway, back in February I noticed my coffee maker was leaking. I got a new, the old the one left a stain which I tried to scrub out without much luck, but figured, what the heck, whose going to be looking under the coffee pot?

Imagine my surprise when I walked into the kitchen about a month ago and saw this:

 Of course this photo was taken  after I removed everything from wooden countertop. You can see where the buckled portion is lifting up the portion by the stove.

So I got a carpenter over here to take a look and he didn't think a leaky coffee pot could do such damage.... which made me better. But then he wasn't sure if he could fix it.... which made me feel bad.

After all, the kitchen was redone only 5 years ago. The wood for the countertop I was told was recycled from a 100 year old building.

The carpenter wasn't available right away but finally came over last week to look at it again and said he thought he could fix it.  The key word being "thought".

He pulled the countertop off and was surprised that nothing was holding it down. No screws. No glue. It was just sitting there, by gravity I guess.

He took some measurements and took the thing to his work shop on Thursday, leaving me living like this all weekend.

Meanwhile, he was going to try to clamp the wooden boards to "unbend" them, then glue them and add supports to keep the boards together. Fingers crossed this would work. And if it did, he'd sand and finish it before bringing back over to my house.

On Monday, he and his worker came back to re-install. The countertop looked great. I couldn't believe it. But when they tried to put it in, it didn't fit! Turns out the contractor who installed the cabinets didn't have the corner properly squared and as the carpenter added support boards, it wasn't fitting. They messed around with it all morning Monday, even going as far as carving a hole in the plaster, but it still didn't work, leaving me with one overnight mess.

Not to mention tired. I'd gotten up at 5:00 a.m. that day because they were coming early in the morning. And now I'd have to get up at 5:00 a.m. again, the next day (today), as they were coming back with different tools including a saw and a sander.

And it finally worked.

BIG DIFFERENCE!!!!

I can't believe he only charged me $311.00!

Now I have to wait until it dries as they put a final coat of stain on it after it was installed. I didn't even see them do it, as I fell asleep on the couch while they working.

They had to wake me up when they finished.

After it dries, I'll be touching up the paint in the corner and putting back my stuff, i.e. coffee maker, canisters, spice rack etc... And making sure the coffee pot never leaks onto the wood countertop again, though the carpenter said it was more of a problem with the way the original contractor did the job, as a leaky coffee pot shouldn't have caused that kind of damage....

Well, I will be glad to have my kitchen back very soon!