Riding the (micro)wave

Drumroll please... we have a microwave now! This is so novel to me. Although I grew up with a microwave, I haven't lived with one since 2003. Actually Jesse and I had one in our old apartment in Boston in 2006, but we only lived there about a year, does that count?

Mounting it was not fun. And we did it three times. Here's what went down: we mounted all the wall cabinets* to standard height above the counter, and set some crown molding on top to discover that a 2" gap would be between that and the ceiling. A gap that would bother me, I just knew it. So we took all the cabinets down, remeasured, and remounted everything up 2".

We stood back in silence, and thought about it. From my vantage point, it looked a little odd. I wouldn't be able to reach anything but the bottom shelves. Maybe we make the base cabinets higher? Then it wouldn't be level with the range or dishwasher. We both knew the answer was to remount everything back the way it was. We took all the wall cabinets down and sulked in frustration. I went upstairs to do laundry while Jesse drank a bottle of wine on the patio. We didn't speak for at least an hour.

I came down waving a white flag and offered an olive branch. And we just went to work putting everything back up hardly saying a word (we had this routine down as this was our third time mounting these damn cabinets). We ate dinner and then went to bed at 1 am.

We woke up joking about it after it was over. Did we really waste an entire night only to get back to where we were? Did we really take everything down and put it all back up and take them down and put it all back up again? Was it all a dream? A nightmare? What were we thinking? More importantly, who's sneaking the crazy pills into our diet?

Anyway, we now have a microwave. And the first thing we put in it was chocolate chip cookies. We needed comfort food big time.

For obvious reasons, I only documented the cabinet mounting the first time around.

*Wall mounting cabinets sucks, you have to make sure everything is level and plum using shims. And then you mount all the cabinets together, again level and plum. And I am not a tall person, nor a particularly strong person. We had to use 2x4's as cleats to hold the cabinets for extra support in lieu of an additional or more able person, while the drilling and screwing and clamping occurred. Learn from us and mount your cabinets only once if you can help it. And keep an eye out for potential crazy pills sneaking into your drinks.