Tag Archives: home improvement

So I have mentioned that home renovation tends to leave The Mr. and I behaving like 5 year olds pushing each other down on the playground in a less-charming manner than we usually do.

I am happy to report that we made it through the work in the kitchen, which took us from this:

to this:

 

and then finally to this:

 

With only a few days of living with this:

Aided considerably by this:

We farmed Jr out to NeNe and Pop for some of that time, and ate fruit and cheese off of a single cutting board while sitting on the floor of the family room.  If we weren’t so stressed out about how it was all going to come together, it would have been “romantic” and stuff.  (If we were escapees from a RomCom, and not two incredibly practical, cynical, ex-dwellers of a 1960’s highrise  condo that sucked our souls with each project we undertook and survived.)

I confess – I am in love.  Being the foodie/culinary school drop out that I am, it is HUGE to be back in a kitchen I love.

(Bust out the stretchy pants and double the cardio time, because I want to cook and cook and cook.  Then for dessert, I will sit and stare at my kitchen and think about what else I want to cook.)

The Mr. had other plans.  Kitchen finished?

On to 3 bathrooms.  All at once.  Complete gut jobs, each one.

 

I am a freaking refugee at the Home Depot, people.  I think I should have my damn mail forwarded:

Reluctantly Suburban Girl, c/o Home Depot,  Patio Furniture dept (Those new-fangled “it looks like it belongs in the living room, but it’s for the patio” type styles are remarkably comfy. Total sleeper possibilities.)

Finding an ever-lovin’ 60 inch vanity is like surviving a fiestaware ebay auction – all of the stock is online, and if you blink the one you want is out of stock again.  And HOLY CRAP are they expensive! I just want to set my dang flat-iron on something, but for what we are paying I feel like I should be able to fly it to work or something.  😐

We are just in the material buying phase now, with work to start in early May.

If you need me I will be on the back patio with one of these:

Depending on the time of day, I will either be using it to take a bath, or filling it with wine.

(Can we just go stare at the kitchen again?)

 

 

When we finally finished the last of the renovation work on the Tree House (my pet name for our highrise condo,) we swore up, down, and sideways we would never get another place that needed so much updating.  Bathrooms, the kitchen, flooring, deck resurfacing…. on and on it went. (Not to mention we change paint colors on a pretty regular basis- The Mr. and our painter had a bromance of epic proportions. )
Ugh.
We are not good at it- we usually spend the timeline of the project trading who wants to mow who with the car…. so far we have both missed decided against going through with it. 
So far.

The suck of it all?
It turns out we are attracted to places like that because nothing, no matter how “done” it is, ever actually feels like us until we rip it up a little.

We are so NOT Mr. and Mrs. DIY.  You won’t see us trolling Home Depot with one of those uber-carts piling up sheet rock and lumber and power tools together.
We hire it out, prep the space and go into reno-mode.
This involves martinis, take out, and lots of barely talking to each other while spending every moment we possibly can on the patio and NOT inside the war construction zone.

We have almost notoriously bad reno-karma. 

So when this morning’s start to the kitchen cabinet refinishing went from zero to insane-crew-member creating a scene in the street and then peeling out of the subdivision, twice, I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised.
But we still were.

If I’m going to live in a freaking soap opera, can we get some shirtless hot dudes up in here?

FFS, anything that involves more than the big box carpet installer dudes seems to mean 3 of The 4 Horsemen will most likely be the workers who show up (Or at least stop by for a material drop to make sure shit is going adequately off the rails?)

COME ON!!

Also – it’s fine to call a pint glass a “stemless martini glass,” right?
Because I need to upsize the drink like we upsized the house that needs work.