How Do You Spell Relief?

K-I-T-C-H-E-N


Finally, my kitchen is back to normal. If you read my kitchen hell post from a couple of months ago, you may remember that it looked like this:


My repairs were supposed to last 2-3 weeks. In my own head, I translated that to a month. I am not at all thrilled that it took nearly two months and I'm grateful that everyone around me survived it. As much as I love my mom, I'm glad that I don't have to drive to her house every night for dinner (and my wallet is glad that I don't have such an easy excuse to hit happy hour). Jersey and I went grocery shopping this weekend and were able to fill our refrigerator and cupboards; I never thought I'd be so excited about that. I also decided to go ahead and get a new dishwasher, as long as the old one was already out, and I upgraded my countertop as a treat to myself.

The repairs got me onto a slight home improvement kick, so I have painted my home office (the use of which is about to increase dramatically - more on that in an upcoming post) and the downstairs bathroom. The living room and master bedroom will be painted, hopefully, by the end of the year. I also just slipcovered my living room furniture and got all new bedding for our bed. I will take pictures of all of it once everything is finished! YAY!

Any fun projects going on in your house?

Kitchen Hell

I apologize for being somewhat MIA over the past couple of weeks, both here and in comments I'd normally leave on your blogs. I have been dealing with some chaos in my house; specifically, I had an unknown leak behind my kitchen sink, the water spread throughout my walls, mold appeared, my insurance company has been in constant contact, my kitchen was torn apart, the mold problem was remediated, and now I need repairs. Fun, huh?

This is what it looks like now (ignore the mess in the living room...the rest of the house has had to shift a little to accommodate the various workers I've had trouncing through the repair zone...and my appliances have bumped Jersey's car from the garage). At this point, I have a rebuild quote from my insurance company and I just need to find someone who can do the work for that amount of money. I'm very fortunate that everything, minus my deductible, is being paid. Nothing has come out of my pocket yet, so this could all be much worse. The first company that gave me an estimate was ridiculous, complaining that it was a ton of work (while I agree that it's not something that can be done in an afternoon, it's really just drywall, cabinets, and counters...it is NOT $7000 worth of labor). I have received referrals from coworkers, so I will be contacting those contractors asap so that this can all be done soon.

In the meantime, I have been carting my laptop back and forth from my office so that I can get some work done while also being available to all the people who have needed access to my house. I've been known to sit on the stairs and work on files while answering various questions about the damage and my home in general. The trickiest part about working in this situation is that I get horrendous reception on my cell phone when I'm downstairs, so I have to run upstairs each time my phone rings. Quite the sight, I imagine.

My mom has been more than helpful throughout all of the mess, graciously letting Jersey and me crash her kitchen after work each night and on weekends. Not that I don't like doing the take-out thing, but my waistline and wallet wouldn't be thrilled with weeks of that. In addition to giving us a place to go for meals, my mom has also been great about relaying messages to me from work (we work together, which is handy), covering for me at meetings, and dropping stuff off to me when I haven't been able to leave during the day.

Poor Jersey has been wonderful about the craziness. I know it sucks to not have a kitchen, but she's been understanding about it. Personally, I've only had one minor breakdown so far, just from the pure stress of balancing home and work. Again, I know how lucky I am that it's not a lot worse. So, that's where I've been. I will do my best to keep up with the posts and comments, but I promise that I haven't forgotten about you!