Minute Changes in the Kitchen

It turns out that living without a sink for two weeks will cause your kitchen to look like it imploded. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it! The kitchen is too much of a mess to show you pictures of the entire room. I like to try to maintain the charade of the ideal homemaker, and to show you the kitchen as it is would be admitting that I am anything but perfect. O.K. Whom am I kidding? I let you in on my secrets too long ago to try to pretend anything now. Here is what my kitchen currently looks like.

Am I winning the kitchen renovation challenge yet?

Do I at least earn points for having freshly baked cookies cooling on the stove?

I know that everyone is dying to find out what was decided about the counters. Well, Home Depot has arranged for them to be replaced with the counters that we originally picked out. I am so pleased with their customer service! I highly recommend buying from Home Depot. However, that means that we have to wait a couple more weeks before continuing our progress.

So, what have I been doing for the past week other than waiting for the fate of my countertops to be decided? The truth is that I have not been doing much in the kitchen, but you probably already figured that out.

Monday night was my swim team’s league championship. That meant that we had an extra-long practice on Saturday. Then, Sunday morning was the qualifying meet for the championship. That evening be had a team dinner. Monday was a late night at the championship. This is my excuse for not posting anything on Monday in case you were wondering where I was. I could have been more organized and prepared a post earlier, but I also teach and was feeling overwhelmed last week.

The good news was that the girls won the championship! The boys took fifth, but they are very young. We only have one senior, and there are two 8th grade boys on the team, so we can only get better next year. It is the tradition for the winning team to jump in the pool after the results are announced, and they always push me in as well- clothes and all. Here is a picture of me soaking wet from a couple of years ago.

I did try to squeeze in a couple of kitchen projects over the weekend. The cabinets were rather grimy and worn looking, so I decided to give them some attention.

First, I cleaned them well with Murphy’s Oil Soap. Crème helped. Sometimes she just pointed out areas that I missed.

At other times, she had to take a more active role and show me how to do it properly.

The cabinets looked much better when we had finished.

Look how dirty the water was!

Douglas changed the doors on the tall counter by the door so that they would open in the opposite direction. It has always bothered me that they open towards the counter instead of towards the wall.

He also took the hardware off all of the cabinets so that I could polish it, but I never finished. I hope to have some good before and after pictures for you soon.

Finally, I started to wipe down the cabinets with Restor-A-Finish. Unfortunately, I did not finish those either, but the ones that I did look great. Here is a look at the before and after.

The final change was on the floor. For some reason, I did not have matching rugs in this room.

The long green braided rug was in the hall, but it kept moving around and made it difficult to open the basement door. I like it a lot better in the kitchen.

The smaller green braided rug is now in front of the heater where we leave our shoes. Eventually, I would like to come up with a better solution for this area, but this works for now.

I was hoping to finish the kitchen by the end of February, but I am not sure if we are going to meet that deadline. The counters are scheduled to be installed on Tuesday, February 18, and we will still have the tile the backsplash and paint after that. Please, keep your fingers crossed that the counter installation will go well this time around. I want to finish this room!

Do not forget to check out the other bloggers progress: Sarah, Carrie, Kelly and Suesan.

Happy Homemaking!