Busy Weekend

OK, to start off, I've made a few bids at this online auction site fasttrackauctions.com where they liquidate fixtures and equipment from stores and restaurants. CubeNeighborKelly and I got some cute chairs from an auction a few weeks ago, and then on Friday afternoon, I won a bid for some baskets. Kelly had recently suggested that I get some baskets for storing snacks and pantry items and these seemed like they might work for that. Plus, they were a bargain at a total bid of 75 cents. Yup, 75 cents. So, I won the auction with that bid, and with the buyer's premium and tax, my grand total was 92 cents. Hee!
Unfortunately, as I looked up the directions to the pickup location, I found that the location that I had read as "Springdale" was actually "Springboro," approximately 25 miles further than anyplace I had planned to travel Saturday. I mentioned this to my friend Kim at breakfast and she kindly donated the 92 cents for the baskets because the whole thing was so funny and she loved the idea of me giving the guy exact change. So, this is the 92 cents:
So, after breakfast, I went to get the baskets, which included a loooong side trip to the Springboro Tourist Information Center (who even knew there was one?) and a couple of cute little consignment shops and a stop at the post office to send a letter to Kim. I bought another basket, which will eventually hold my in-progress stitching projects, at one of the consignment shops.

Here are the 75-cent baskets once they were in my kitchen:

And the other basket from the consignment store. Note that Stella is in the picture for scale. Or because she has to ruin everything.
After picking up the baskets, I headed over to CNKelly's house to help her fix and paint the fence by her patio. This involved sawing, nailing, sanding, and painting, and we aren't finished because there are multiple layers of paint needed. I'll post a picture when this is all finished because it's going to be really cool. After we got the first coat of paint on, we sat down to watch Kelly's daughter play kickball with some neighborhood friends. When it was time for me to leave, we had to move their bikes out of the driveway and we lined them up, Baby-Biker-Bar style:
Also, Kelly was deadheading some daylilies and accidentally took an open bloom off, so I stuck it behind my ear for the ride home:

And it turns out that they are called daylilies because the blooms only last for one day, which I learned when I came out this morning and the bloom was closed up even though I had put it in a little vase.

When I got home, I decided to use the rest of my evening to put my pantry items into the baskets and put the baskets on top of my kitchen cabinets. This meant cleaning the cabinets. Now, I know I'm not the first person to think of cleaning the cabinets, but I might be the first person to think of cleaning these cabinets, because they were majorly nasty. So much so that I decided not to take a photo, for your benefit. You can thank me later.

Once I had emptied the cabinets along the Wall to Be Destroyed Later, I decided to go ahead and take those cabinets off so that I can get this project underway. I also started peeling the wallpaper, which had also been painted with a few layers of paint, including the purple color that I loved in my upstairs bedroom but hate as a kitchen color.

This is a view of the wall when I remembered to take a picture, which was after I took the first smaller cabinet off: and this is the wall as it looks now, with both cabinets gone and a nasty dirt ring around where they used to be:
Mmmm, tasty! It turns out there's quite a bit of damage to the wall on the kitchen side, so I'm thinking I'll end up knocking out all the plaster on the kitchen side and hanging drywall on the bottom half (the top half will stay open so the kitchen and dining room are open to each other).
I plan to start chipping away at the kitchen side of the wall sometime this week so I can decide exactly what's going to happen with this wall.

By the by, Rob mentioned tonight that some guy was in the news because he was in jail on a misdemeanor violation of working on his home without a permit. I didn't know that was something people were incarcerated for, but it explains why all the convicted burglars, rapists, and murderers get paroled early, so they can make room in the jailhouse for the home-improvement-without-permission guys. If anyone ever breaks in and kills me, I'll be able to take comfort in knowing that at least the house won't collapse while I'm being violated and terminated.