It's Not Broken, It's Italian.

That's what my old landlord in NYC said to us after we told her that we had to replace the kitchen faucet because the on/off lever didn't function.

This is one of my favorite lines, together with the old adage from What Not To Wear: "Just because it's made in Italy doesn't mean its good."

(A nod to bad leather bags.... which reminds me of the exchange from You've Got Mail between Meg Ryan and Greg Kinnear about Spain:

"It happened in Spain. People do really stupid things in foreign countries."

"Absolutely. They buy leather jackets for much more than they're worth.")

But enough random connections. The Italian faucet line keeps coming to mind as we deal with this whole kitchen thing. Today the folks from HD and their subconntractor were out at the house and it looks like theoretically we have a resolution at least as between us and the sub. (We'll see what happens next between us and HD.)

But this leaves open picking out the fun stuff: i) faucet, ii) tv, iii) deciding whether we want a pot-filler faucet over the rangetop, iv) chairs/stools for the island, v) switchplate covers, vi) tile backsplash and vii) island lighting (did I tell you I ordered these neat looking mini-pendant lights by George Kovacs (called "Droplets") which unfortunately are backordered through November 24th!?!.... needless to say we'll be looking for replacements for those babies...) We're currently waiting for some additional cabinets to come in (ones that didn't seem to make it to our house in the first or second deliveries...) we've been told they're shipping from the manufacturer on the 22nd... after they're installed then we can template for our granite.

The latest news, too, just to keep you all filled in, is how the designer from the HD apparently failed to update her CAD program so after the subcontractor realized that the initial estimator mismeasured our kitchen by seven inches, it was never fixed at the HD. Thus, we're seven inches short cabinet wise and then for some reason cabinets didn't arrive so they've rearranged where cabinets are going so the final layout isn't what we had ordered! At this point it's mostly a "whatever" situation, but one thing we weren't going to just pass on was our Double Oven cabinet. They are going to be rebuilding it since right now the double oven is sitting eight inches higher than what is customary. When your ceiling is only 83 inches high, and the chief cook and bottle washer is only 60 inches tall, 8 inches makes a big difference.

Will post more pictures when we have some new developments, in the mean time any faucet/chair/tv suggestions are more than welcome!