Home, Ugly, Home
Yes, home is where the heart is. The kitchen is the heart of the house.
Our home and kitchen are the heart of a big, messy remodeling project. We decided to update our kitchen with new cabinets, countertops, and flooring. While we were at it, we also want to review traffic flow, which means moving some of the plumbing and electrical.
My husband, Randy, decided that we would do the remodel ourselves instead of hiring someone else to do it. He once built an entire house and it’s still standing after 20 years, so I’m confident he can handle the workload as long as I supervise.
Our kitchen remodel has been underway for 9 weeks and we have things ripped up and scattered everywhere. I have given up on keeping the house clean. Keeping up with parts of the house and where we put our groceries this week is hard enough. We decided to take things in small segments so Randy wouldn’t have to take time off from his day job to work at home. He does what he can at night and on the weekends. It is slow but steady progress.
Our kitchen has partially painted walls, some with the old paint color, some with the new paint color, and some with new drywall that needs to be muddyed or sanded. There is more paint on the old vinyl floor than on the walls in some places. Sanding dust decorates every flat surface in the house, and every piece of furniture has smiley faces and butterflies etched with fingers and signed by the grandchildren. What a work of art!
The remaining old base cabinets with their tired, worn faces are put to shame by the beautiful new wall cabinets we’ve installed. The peeling and cracked countertops sit precariously on top of the old base cabinets that had to be removed from the wall to allow access to tear out the old bulkhead and hang the new upper cabinets. Plates are stacked all over the dining room. We even have small appliances in the living room. The rest of the newly assembled IKEA cabinets are in the guest bedroom waiting their turn in line.
Randy released me to pick out the new countertop, so I went out to the granite patio and bought a big, expensive piece of rock. With the jig man coming next week, we have the terrazzo tile flooring due this weekend so we can install the base cabinets to a proper size. That means we have to move the sink and plumbing to the other side of the dishwasher by Tuesday. No problem. Who needs sleep?
You can see photos of the work in progress at http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/von_von/perry_kitchen_remode/.