Almost there.....

I read in a remodeling blog recently that approximately 3/4 through the project is when the homeowner morale is lowest. The last few weeks have been my dark place. I think perhaps banshee is a good word to describe me around the house....I can not wash one more dish in the tub. The dust is making me insane. We are literally 2 weeks from done and I still can't believe this will ever be finished. It seems to eek along at a snails pace. We had snow this week, another delay. Our appliances were delivered but not the oven. The snow comes down outside tonight and I wonder if any work will happen on Monday. I had a dream (nightmare) last night in which they told us we would be still working on this thru February.

We painted last weekend. Here we are getting ready to paint. The color I picked for the kitchen accent walls took 4 coats. I was painting my kitchen on Monday night at 10:30 pm. That was fun. I do love the color, though. It is exactly right. Photo taken at night - color looks better in daylight. It is LIME. In a good way. To the right of the lime will be an accent wall of wallpaper once I get to that in the coming weeks.
This is the upstairs with paint. To the right of the window is our new bathroom - unfinished for the time being. We didn't intend to finish it immediately, and will do so gradually over the coming months. We're actually getting all crazy and trying to do the remaining work ourselves - tile, flooring. Nice to not have chaos outside the bedroom anymore...

Snow continues to Fall tonight in Seattle. They said 4-8 inches in the metro area.. we walked to a local restaurant for dinner. Peter has been unable to get to work for 2 days. I tried to take my car out today to run errands. As soon as I was in our street sliding on ice towards our neighbor's car I decided nothing was urgent. We remain snowbound for the rest of the weekend...

Holiday Spirit

I've not had a lot of holiday spirit this year.....the above photo of my dining room might tell you why. People talk about their holiday decorations and my only comment to the conversation is: There is no point in decorating my house this year. See above photo. Do you want to decorate that? Put lights in a window that has boxes stacked in front of it? Half of my driveway is piled with construction debris. Every room has a layer of drywall dust on it. Let's accent that! A girlfriend came over a few weeks ago and just said "Wow. Your house looks like Beiruit."(and yes it does)
Just a few days later, this is outside of my bedroom. It begins to look like a hallway. The door at the end is our new bathroom.
And this. This is the piece de la resistance. I came home one night last week and this was what had transpired. The most beautiful thing I had seen in so long. My eyes literally filled with tears of happiness. Our bamboo cabinets were beginning to be installed. They are stunning. I have a hierarchy of spending in the home. Things you use all the time you spend dough on. Sofa - spend some cash. A bar stool that you sit on for 20 minutes at a crack - inexpensive. I have Target lamps that are cheap yet lovely. Cabinets - these things are the foundation of your kitchen. Good ones will last forever. Crappy ones will not. (was at a friends house a few weeks ago and slid a perhaps 7 year old cabinet drawer to have it semi collapse in my hand....) The slide on ours is like buttah. I have lived in places with crappy kitchens where you struggle to shut a drawer. Not these. They have a "soft close" so about 3 inches from shutting they will shut themselves silently. No slamming will ever happen. As I stood in the kitchen oohing and ahhing the husband yelled - "slide a drawer!!" Oh, yeah. That's what I'm talkin' about. And they just look soooooooo pretty. (sustainable, too!)

Oh, but look how I go on and on about my cabinets.....

Although my Christmas spirit is low, a few things happened to me lately that make me feel the spirit of sharing and kindness. I was walking the dog and admiring neighbors gardens a few weeks back. My garden is in serious need of help. I tore ours out last year (hideous. weedy.) and it's just a bit barren now. My dog walk thought was "I wish someone would share some of their plants with me." I turned the corner and literally there was a pile of uprooted plants with a sign "FREE PLANTS". Needless to say I got my car, drove back and took them home. They look so lovely filling in the empty spaces. I plan to leave a thank you note on the doorway of the house that gave them to me. It honestly was just what I needed that day.

The second thing is knowing we have such good friends. Thanksgiving weekend, the huz took a sudden trip back home to be with his family. His mother is not well, she suffered kidney failure a few weeks ago, had surgery, was in the hospital for a week and was put on dialysis. It was important that he be with her - of course. We thought it was the exact time we needed to paint the kitchen and I would be left alone to primer and paint in 2 days. I hate asking for help. It's just how I am. I sheepishly emailed friends for help and had so much help offered in return. It felt so good to know our community was there for us. At the last minute the schedule changed and we couldn't paint that weekend. I was touched by all the support regardless. My mother in law is doing okay, slowly but surely. She had her family there to comfort her, which is more important than anything you can put a price on.

In our last weeks of remodeling, and the negative budget left to cover it, we look for anything we can do ourselves. (there will be action shots of us wallpapering in a few weeks....) Peter has a good friend who is not only a neighbor but an electrical engineer. He can install an oven in his sleep. They have kids, they are busy - we understand they have more obligations than we do. Although, we do have neighborly exchanges. I went to consult on a paint color recently, Peter helped install a banister. We do these things. We're friends. We have wine. They're great people. We told him and his wife that in exchange for appliance installation help we'd pay for a babysitter for an entire day for them. She can go do whatever her heart desires while the boys install a range hood, oven, dishwasher.....They said fine - saving us a ton on paying someone for it. Another good friend to the rescue.

There might be a Santa Claus after all.

How exciting is drywall??

The answer is : VERY. The above photo shows our denim walls. Yes, the entire addition has been insulated with denim. Or, to be more specific, reclaimed denim scraps that have been made into insulation that is as effective as the hideous fiberglass insulation that is standardly used. I do like the karmic justice of having used fabric as my lifeblood and using the scraps in my home.

This photo above shows our DRYWALL in the kitchen. ( and that little window will have a mountain view!) I have never been more excited by drywall. It's the beginning of the end once they are drywalling. Oh. My. God. It looks like a room again.

We really only have a few more weeks left. This started end of August. It was end of Oct. when our kitchen became non-functional. It is now end Nov. I vacillate between "holy shit how can I take this another moment" and finding it normal to stack dirty dishes in the bathroom. It's the end of the project. The cost swelled beyond all expectations, even for 2 people who have remodeled before and were prepared to go over budget. ( note to self, when a contractor comes in at 50% of the other bids, you should try to figure out why before you hire them....like maybe they bid only the cost of installing one light in a kitchen that started out with 4 lights and is having more space added to it...nope, you end up with 11 lights, and you will pay for 11 lights. so let's just multiply that part of the bid by 11...) I have washed dishes in the tub for, oh, 4 weeks. I think I may weep when the new dishwasher is installed in about 3 weeks. That's 7 weeks of dishes in the tub, people.

It will be beautiful. We'll forget the inconvenience, the dust, the endless check writing. It's what I tell myself every day....

Fun with the 80's

This is how I went to work one day this week. In my vintage U2 tee shirt from
The Unforgettable Fire tour in 1984, a concert I attended. (of course, paired with a Stella McCartney blazer to spruce it up a bit...) Vintage rock tees are all the rage - I seriously could sell this for a few hundred bucks on Ebay. But it is far too precious. I had to point out my tee's origin to people. It's worn so thin, threadbare and perfectly soft. I fear ruining it. Many were impressed in the hallowed halls of fashion where I spend my weekdays. Like my 23 year old coworker who realized she WAS NOT BORN when I was at that concert.....

This concert is near the top of my top 10 concerts ever list. I have always kept this tee to commemorate it. U2 was not "U2" yet. They were still playing in small venues. The Aragon Ballroom on Lawrence Ave - in the heart of Al Capone's old Chicago, where my Aunt attended many a Swing dance back in the 1940's - was boarded up when last I drove past it a few years back. On this night in 1984, we were in high school. Out on our own in downtown Chicago seeing a show. My best girlfriends in tow - screaming till we were hoarse. Those best girlfriends remain in my life to this day and forever. Even if one of them notoriously can not get the words right..."Wash my arms in the name of love?" I don't think so...

I can't recall if we got beer or if we were simply covered in it from the cool-whip type containers it was served out of and subsequently sloshed to the floor from. Aside from a completely energized show by an up and coming, soon to be legendary band, the night held it's own magic. U2 always ends with their song "40". (I didn't know this then, but every time I have seen them since they end the same way....) At the end, Bono sings the chorus and the audience sings along. The guitar stops, walks off, bass stops, walks off, finally the drums stop and it's just the Rock God that is Bono on stage keeping the crowd singing. Finally he walks off. Every othrt time I have witnessed this, the crowd sings for a few minutes and trails off. Not so this cold December night in 1984. The crowd didn't stop singing. We sang the refrain walking down the steps and out into the night. It echoed thru the streets of Chicago as we left. I have never since seen anything like it.
Oh, and the house....it just drags on....This is the view from my bedroom door into the soon to be bathroom framed in back.....We're in plumbing stage now - hopefully will have inspection this week. The electrical took 2 full weeks because we had to replace our entire electrical panel. Surprise!! Once we have passed our plumbing inspection they can drywall and I believe things will start to go fast.....or so I hope......It's about week 4 of no kitchen at all. I'm ready for it to be over.

Yes. We. Did.

It's hard for me to focus on much more than the amazing result of Election Day. Who'd a thunk it a year ago? The progress this country seems to have made is heartening. The only sad note for me is the anti-gay initiatives that passed in several states. Denying gay marriage in CA, in Louisiana making adoption illegal for gay people. Really? There is still progress to be made on tolerance. It saddens me that my numerous gay friends who I love dearly are being discriminated against. Hopefully one step forward in equality with Obama as president will tip the scales for tolerance in other ways. Hopefully.

That's all for my political statement tonight. We were up so late last night in celebratory mode
that I'm really exhausted today. My friend Ricki is in town for work, she came over to watch the election returns with us. We ended up playing rock band and laughing our asses off until midnight.

We have windows!! We have windows!!! See photos above. The skinny windows on the top photo have a view to the mountains - obscured by a tree. Peter is threatening to cut the tree drastically in order to get a peekaboo view going. Not sure we really need to, since the front wall of the kitchen is now open to see the bigger view thru the dining room window. We're getting a little mountain view whore-ish over here...Bummer note. Our lead guy on the remodel was in a motorcycle accident on Friday. He's okay but spent some time in the hospital and has been off work. It seems to have slowed us down a bit. I'm leaning towards early December as a finish date for this monster.... we shall see. It's getting quite chilly in here these days with November weather and no insulation in a chunk of the space.

Progress report

This is the fun part when I can start to do before and after shots. Above is before we moved in. The house has been painted since, the fence continues to fall apart. (It's on the list. Just not this year's list.) Now feast your eyes on the new kitchen back porch. They have just started siding, the railing for the deck is only partially finished. It will wrap around the bench that you can see the bench on the right side of the railing - cuz where better to sit down and remove my gardening boots? The electrical is done. The plumbing is started. We have a hole in the kitchen ceiling while they are doing the bathroom plumbing. Hence some fun with peering from the upstairs into the kitchen this morning. It's week 2 of no sink, washing dishes in the tub, and subsisting on microwave dinners and take out. We probably have 3-4 more weeks to go. I mean, come on, we have to amuse ourselves to keep the annoyance at bay.

Kobe, me, and my foot!

Now I'm off to Home Depot.....

Now the REAL fun begins....

This.

Leads to this.

We've gotten to the super fun part. There is nothing in our kitchen but the fridge. Luckily, can stay until it gets traded out for the new one at the end. We didn't know they were taking the dishwasher and sink out this week. We had a dishwasher full of dishes. What's a girl to do but fill the tub? EEEssh. That was not fun. I have purchased compostable paper plates and bowls so we can simply stop using dishes for a while.

Allegedly we have a month to go. It's the height of the annoyance. We're eating microwave food. The house is simply covered in dust. The dog is covered in dust. We're keeping doors shut where we can, but I swear the dust is traveling through the heat vents and spewing everywhere. I swear the dust is more of a problem than the lack of a sink!

Funny thing about the economy....we put whatever we could on Craig's List. I hate throwing anything away that can be used. We're selling it all totally cheap. It's all just functional basic kitchen appliances and cabinets......And we have NO takers. Usually you put things on Craig's List and they get snapped up quickly. It's certainly the housing market - fewer people moving = fewer people fixing up to sell or fixing up what they bought. Please, someone - take the stove!!! The economic crisis hits Craig's List....I swear.