odds and ends

Joe and I are incredibly picky, but never about the same things. I’ll cop to an ugly shopping track record—my modus operandi for any major purchase (actually, even for doorbells) is to conduct an exhaustive, time-consuming search, complete with queries about alternative colors and/or sizes of products and attempts to mail order things from overseas.

When all else fails, I turn to DIY, but when it comes to things for the house, I am generally out of my league. (This, despite the fact that I did once, upon learning the cost of a tub drain, threaten to smelt the ore and forge one myself. That I was drinking a margarita the size of a fishbowl at the time is probably not a coincidence).

Joe is just as bad, in his own way. While it’s definitely a plus to have an engineer in your corner for quality control, it does try your patience. And Joe has his own wanton likes and dislikes. Consequently, a trip to the store for drinking glasses can turn into a quest of Holy Grail caliber. This explains why we have few pieces of furniture and no decent dishes.

The faucet has definitely been our longest struggle so far, but we have a few close runners-ups. Here’s what we’re still looking for:

• a medicine cabinet – surface-mounted, single-door, wood-framed (preferably unfinished wood), with glass interior shelves

• a light fixture for over the medicine cabinet – I have long since given up attempting to look for this, as Joe has rejected every one of hundreds I’ve shown him.

• tile for our front entry – should it match the kitchen? The bathroom? I have no freaking clue.

If you have any suggestions, I’ll take them. Oh, and no, we didn’t order that doorbell. I found a place that stocked it and borrowed one to show Joe and his dad. They both became convinced that they could make one for less than $40, so we might be on our way to our first DIY real project.