kitchen renovation

Break the Block

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Wow. I have the worst case of bloggers block ever.  I want to write.  And cook.  And photograph.  But when I try to get going I am distracted by anything and everything possible; Facebook, planning classes, sweeping the floor, going for a walk, washing my hair, a mosquito in my kitchen, my favorite song on Pandora, and before I know it any motivation/inspiration is gone in a poof!

So bare with me while I write the most random post ever because I have a theory that, like  hitting a wall while running a marathon, the best course of action to get through the block is to just push on past it.

It’s a cozy rainy morning here in central Virginia, if you can call insane humidity ‘cozy’. I’m ready for fall, for sweaters and hot tea and crisp mornings and winter squash.  Tate always says that the seasons change at the perfect time for him, just as he’s getting sick of the current one. I agree with him this year.

My big project today is priming the old kitchen.  Yep, we’re still working on it!

Tate busted out the kitchen in no time (7 weeks?) but since we could just close off the old kitchen space and summer got busy we’ve been much more relaxed about finishing it up.

The plastic ain’t pretty but it kept the AC in the house while there were gapping holes in the old kitchen walls!

Tate took the old kitchen down to the studs and then put it back together with a raised ceiling (sayonara nasty popcorn!), a closet, and a more open doorway.

Old.

Today.

From the back door.

(hardest space ever to photograph!!)

The space will be used as a sitting room/office/guest room.  It’s kind of a strange shape for a bedroom but for the few nights a year we have guests it will suffice.

All summer I’ve been very disinterested in being home, cleaning, cooking, or homemaking in general but lately I’m feeling the desire to sort through my closet, finish the renovation, and clean up the yard.  It’s a nice change of pace from feeling sort of flighty for the past few months.

Alrighty, I’m sure that’s quite enough of my rambling, there’s primer to be rolled, papers to grade, classes to plan, recipes to be dreamed up.

Do you notice an energetic shift with the change of the seasons?

Bloggers, how do you push through the block?

Love The Space You Live

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One of the things that made me nervous about undertaking the kitchen renovation was that I felt unqualified to design a kitchen.

Who was I to say what would work or what was a good idea?

Somewhere along the way I realized that there’s no one right way to do things, there are instead a thousand right ways.  And few wrong ways too but that’s another post.

It was a very satisfying and empowering experience to realize I am certainly qualified to make decisions about the space I want to live in.  We took resale into consideration with many of the decisions but overall we decided our desires, logic, and opinions were the most important.

I am loving our kitchen more each day, even through this week of no electricity, and so far have only found very minor things that I would have done differently.

Behind my sister you can see where the old kitchen door is taped off.  Tate has gutted it and we will be turning it into an office/guestroom.

Project stats:

8 weeks from tearing into it to moving in. There is still some trim work and we will probably put a built-in counter where the sewing table is to the right of the fridge but we are in.

1 trip to Ikea.  Countless hours spend on ikea.com.  I am thrilled with the cabinets and countertops so all the research definitely paid off.

83 trips to Lowes…maybe more.

0 real fights, a few arguments over minor decisions.

2 friends generously helped out.

12 hours is the time it took Tate to do that damn beadboard ceiling.

A billion hours is the time Tate put into the kitchen overall.

100:1 is the time Tate put in compared to the time I put in.

1,000 times I have said thank you to Tate.

$300 is what we spent on new appliances.

$8,500 is what I estimated the project would cost.

$5,000 is what Tate estimated.

It’s much closer to his number thanks to his hard work.

Hard to remember the space used to look like this: