Two Weeks Ago

Two weeks ago, I was sitting in our recliner looking at our kitchen. I got up and dialed my husband's number at work.

Hello?

Hi Honey, I'd like to paint our kitchen cabinets white.

Fast forward two weeks and here we are at 8:26pm on a Thursday. We have been working on our kitchen for 14 days. We've logged more hours than I can count. Swept more dust than I could have ever imagined. At this point, we have torn down our ceiling, smashed out our old dated backsplash, moved our fridge and stove into our dining room, completely sanded and emptied our kitchen cabinets and tomorrow we will be removing the upper half of the wall that encloses our kitchen on the dining room side.

"Hi Honey, I'd like to paint our kitchen cabinets white" will go down as one of the most infamous statements that I have ever spoken. Our hard work and labor will pay off in the long run but in all honesty, we did not imagine that we would be completely remodeling our kitchen. Luckily we have done most of the work ourselves thus far. It's definitely a remodel on a budget but I think that the extra steps that we are taking right now are going to be so beneficial in the long run. I know they will.

Today at noon, I started to feel the stress of this whole thing creep up into my neck. My husband and I had to have a honest heart to heart about the direction of this project. My instincts were to stop, tidy up and be done. His were to keep going because "if we've gone this far, we might as well do it right". We can both be very stubborn people so we each plead our cases and then went our own separate ways for a while. Think time for me. Think time for him. An hour later (and after a good conversation with my Mom), I called back to apologize. He has never led us astray with our house projects and I needed to let him know that I have faith in him and in his vision. And he let me know that he completely understood where I was coming from and that he would be willing to make some compromises. Both of our heads were spinning with remodel overload but it was important that we let each other know that we are a team, have always been a team and will always be a team. We come to our own ideas very differently and it is something that after all these years, we are still continuing to learn about one another.

My husband asked his parents to come over to help talk out our new plan and offer advice/opinions and I went ahead and took the kids out for the afternoon as had been planned. And it's probably the best thing we could have done. We have been working on this project side by side for two weeks and it was nice to get away from the project for a bit. I met up with two good girlfriends for a weights class and then a fantastic lunch date afterwards. This little restaurant had a kiddy corner full of toys so we just took our time, chit chatted and relaxed. The girls understood my stress because they have been there with remodels but like my husband said earlier, they also felt that it's best to do it right the first time. And I know all of this. I just worry about the expense of things but I have to say, now that we have come back together with a plan that works well for us both, we are the most excited right now than we have been since starting this project.

Tomorrow, the upper half of a wall will be coming down. This will create a nice breakfast bar. It will open up our kitchen and create the feel of a great room that will include our dining room, kitchen and family room. It is the plan that we have always wanted. Since the first day we got our keys. We just didn't imagine two weeks ago that we would be embarking on this journey right now. It is going to be beautiful. My husband is up in the attic right now with his headlamp on rerouting our wiring. It's so amazing that he is as skilled as he is with everything related to home remodels.

I guess this evening I just needed to write. I needed to take some time to organize and express my thoughts. Human emotion is such an interesting thing. Stress and anxiety can pop up at the most random times but over the years, I have learned that expressing myself honestly seems to keep me the most balanced. Today, we had to have a very honest talk about the direction that we BOTH wanted to take with this remodel. And because of taking the time to have that talk, a talk that didn't start easily, we are now completely on the same page and have a deeper understanding of one another's desires and wishes.

Operation Kitchen Cabinets will now be referred to as Operation Kitchen Demolition. Our kitchen is the last space in our house in need of some serious update. And as you can see by this blip, there is no turning back now.......