It all started with a stove

Ok, so I shared earlier this week photographic evidence of why I took a few days off here and there with my entries. My husband and I have been discussing updating our home for a long time. It was built in 1992 and has not really been updated since. He has made a few adjustments over the years, he built the studio, which is a great space for us, we redid the upstairs bathroom about ten years ago, and of course some paint, etc. So when we finally got to a point where we were ready to do a little updating we decided to start at a new stove. We needed one anyway. I am not the best maintainer of household appliances. I don't mean to mess things up but, invariably, I do. Two of the four burners on our stovetop were nonfunctional. There were some other issues he told me about but I forget. Anyway, we needed a new stove so we decided to start in the kitchen.

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I had taken a week of PTO and we opted to start then. As my husband makes his living as an artist, he decided he would spray the cabinets instead of rolling and brushing them. What this meant is they had to all be cleaned, like shine-like-the-top-of-the-Chrysler-building clean. It has been a rough last several years. We were just trying to survive and keep our house most of it, so heavy duty cleaning and maintenance had really not been followed up on. So we ended up getting out the automotive degreaser (and diluting it, of course) for this job.

So the drawers, drawers facings, and cabinet doors ended up outside on our deck where our youngest and I scrubbed and scrubbed and degreased and degreased and I got some sun. She takes after her father, she didn't burn at all, but she did get bit by mosquitos. She is very sweet.

When I sent those photos to a girlfriend of mine she said, "You have an outdoor kitchen!" I laughed and agreed. I told her it was an upgraded feature.

This purple dresser is in our bedroom. Those boxes contain the contents of our cabinets. Like often during a renovation, things go in unexpected places. I found it funny watching people's faces when I told them my kitchen was half on my deck and half in my bedroom.

Unfortunately, the people that owned the house previously had installed brick veneer as a back splash all the way down one side of our kitchen. We were not fans. It is hard to keep clean and even harder to remove. The white is the paint they had put over the brick. The red is the brick itself after my husband had chiseled and hammered and pry barred and cussed a lot. It was all but hopeless. We were not amused.

So... We decided it would be better just to cut it all out and replace the sheetrock. Well, my husband did. I just kind of agreed with what he said was best. He has three decades of experience in these type of things. I can't even keep a stove alive. So that's what we did. I tried not to panic.

Did you know cabinets are just held up by a handful of screws into studs? Like... That's it. I assumed we would have to cut around the cabinets. Nope. "Hand me my screw gun babe," he says. I did. And wah-la! In a matter of moments the empty cabinets were off the wall and he had started cutting away pieces of the wall. THE WALL. HE CUT AWAY PIECES OF THE WALL. I didn't even know you could DO that. You can also, it turns out, MOVE a wall. You can move door openings! THEY MOVE! I am so uneducated about this stuff.

So I reckon stay tuned for more of my childlike wonder at home renovation. And if you want to know what hand power tools he uses, he uses the Milwaukee 18V Fuel system. You can see it here (aff link): https://amzn.to/3iQ1Xxi

Be well y'all.