my kitchen

We are nearing the 1 year anniversary that marks the beginning of our kitchen, mudroom, bathroom addition/remodel project. Let me be the first to tell you that this year has tried my patience...it's been a year of mud, sawdust, insulation, drywall, and lumber coming and going through the door. Drywallers in my kitchen for 2 weeks straight, holes in the wall covered by plastic, my desk contents in plastic storage totes by my nightstand, the coffee pot in the bathroom, eating off paper plates in the living room, piles of insulation falling down in the middle of the kitchen- always when i'm least suspecting it i might add, and layers of dust everywhere....which proves to be tricky when you are trying to keep some order for 4 little people.

When we bought our house 5 years ago, the plan was always to remodel the kitchen. It was a sweet combination of 80's dark brown cupboards and counters, complete with brown and orange vinyl flooring curling at the edges. We toyed with the idea of adding on for a few years. There were other things that needed to be fixed on the house.... the roof needed to be replaced, the deck needed some serious help, the sunporch needed some tlc., and the list went on. We were always in a quandry, because if we were to someday add on to the house it made no sense to fix any of these things now, b/c we would just need to do it again....and let me tell you how much we love doing things twice :)

Well, we finally got to the point that we needed to make a decision already; either we do it or we don't and get on with the repairs that need to be made. We decided to go ahead with it... with the understanding that we would do the majority of the work ourselves to save money, and i would need to be REALLY patient with the time that it takes. Tim spent the early part of last fall/winter drawing up the plans, getting permits, taking our sunporch and deck off and getting stuff re-routed etc. Then we kind of sat around waiting for Stella to be born. Well, on the Friday that i was 3 days overdue, we were ready to just get on with it, break ground and get things rolling. While Tim was loading up the excavator to take home, he set his cell phone down on the tracks because it kept falling out of his pocket. Well, as the story goes, he ran it over, and of yes I had been having contractions all day of course!

Well, he made it home and i had Stella early the next morning.... so the digging had to wait. We laughed and made it our goal to have the kitchen finished by the time Stella turned 1. Well, next week marks the big one. Though we are not going to achieve our goal, we are getting very close! Thankfully Tim had a really busy summer/fall at work making his free time pretty sparse- which is a good i suppose :)

Sorry to make this drag on. I've taken a ton of pictures along the way, so I tried my hand at making a little movie. I will definately post more pictures and less words when we are all finished. Don't mind the music- I know Toby Mac isn't really kitchen remodelish- he's just my new fav.....enjoy!