I fear I have fallen behind – but here, have an update! I’ve been working much less steadily on the kitchen, ignoring it for entire evenings – it’s amazing how much less urgent it all feels when you’ve got a working stove.

Anyway, I finally found a light for over the sink that I don’t hate. It’s not quite perfect, but I like it well enough to live with it indefinitely. The hiccup in this was that as I went to install it, I realized that my electrician had just left me wires in the ceiling, not an actual ceiling box, y’know, anchored in the attic, made of metal, capable of holding up a light fixture. So I called my contractor, and he sent the electrician back to put the box in. It took maybe 15 minutes, but electricity is one of those things I leave to the experts. With the box in, installation of the fixture was pretty straightforward, and now I have light over my sink.

I also tiled the rest of the backsplash area, discovering along the way that my outlets are at very slightly different heights, and also my windows are too, at least in relation to the countertop, which is true level all the way around the room. This meant cutting tiles in a variety of different shapes, but I got them all in eventually. Then I got to grout, and made a ridiculous rookie mistake – never mix more grout than you can use in half an hour. It hardens, it’s really hard to mix in large quantities, and you end up having to buy a whole second box of grout when the first one should’ve been more than enough. Argh. But I did get the whole kitchen grouted, and now the backsplash recedes into a solid wall of white, instead of being a strongly patterned wall where you can see all the spaces between tiles really well.

So here’s what the kitchen looks like tonight…

..and a closeup of grouted tile because it makes me feel accomplished.