All of a sudden
it's a trash fire
It’s so cute that I thought myself fully immersed in the ‘worse before better’ stage when all I had was an empty room.
This, my friends, is pretty bad:
Actually, wait. Maybe that looks somewhat organized (it’s not). Here’s the other side of that room:
Don’t know if you can make out the thick layer of dust and despair lying over everything, but it’s definitely there.
See, I when I laid out all my plans in spreadsheets and calendars, I was confident the kitchen would be done long before it was time to tear out the rest of the engineered floors in the front room. But no. That’s not how things went at all.
I was so worried about putting the cabinets together, I didn’t spare a lot of stress molecules for the actual installation of the cabinets. Y’all. I had that backasswards.
The entire month of May was incredibly stressful at work. I had been assigned a graphics ticket that turned into a many-headed hydra and I was in over my head. I had not been sleeping well (anxiety dreams and night paralysis FTW!) and was up against a major work deadline the weekend my sisters came up to help with the cabinets. Instead of taking the day off as planned, I ended up working until 8pm and still missed the Very Important Deadline. Though my sisters did the lion’s share of the work, the assembly part went really smoothly once we had the right staple gun and watched enough how-to videos.
When it came time to install them, we were shocked at how hard it all was. After an entire month of high, high stress, my body went into revolt. I had hives and a swollen lip, an awful sleep-deficit-headache that wouldn’t quit, aaand then POTS symptoms started. Could I be any more high maintenance?
Me. On a mattress. In the dining room. (The new tile still has grout haze all over it because all my careful scheduling plans have imploded.)
Meanwhile, my sisters and friend did this without me:
I hate it when my body doesn’t cooperate. I hate it when I have multiple chronic symptoms all flare up at once. I hate feeling like a service project. This was mentally and emotionally frustrating, but I’m also really grateful for my people and want to send everyone ponies.
I had blissfully ordered this easy peasy cabinet hanging rail system from Kreg (not an affiliate link) fully believing it would make installing cabinets a breeze. It… did not work out. I didn’t realize (because math!) just how tall the new cabinets were when I ordered and we did not have enough room at the top of the floating wall to use the rails. ALSO, that floating wall is HELLA crooked & the end of it, which should have been built with a support beam running up into the rafters, leans in toward the kitchen an INCH AND A HALF.
I mean, it has probably been leaning like that for 8 years (this wall has always had kitchen cabinets on it), but now I cannot unsee. 😭 It made installing the cabinets so much more difficult than it needed to be. Have I mentioned that my studs are like, 24” apart and end in random spots and make no sense? That has also made this a trash fire. All the tutorials are like, you can predrill your holes in the backs of your cabinets to save time! Just space them out 16” to line up with studs! Hahahaha, hilarious.
Since rebuilding the wall is currently out of the question budget & sanity wise, I’ve been calling cabinet pros to see if they could come help me shim the cabinets out so they hang correctly & then sort out trim of some kind to hide the shimming. I guess it’s not that weird to have crooked walls and issues like this (helpful to know after I cried about it for three days straight), but I do have to wait a few weeks before anyone can come help me with this problem.
Anyway, back to the original install night wherein I’m on a mattress: My can-do sister, who regularly scales mountains for fun, sat down next to me on the mattress and said, “I think this just might be out of our skill set. Is there anyone you can call?”
And you guys, if that particular sister says that? The house is basically on fire and we all need to evacuate. She doesn’t give up lightly.
Also, no, I don’t have anyone I can call. My handy husband is dead and my circle of local friends is small.
While I cried and sucked down salt water, they did it. And after they forced me into bed at 2am, they did more. I woke up to all of the uppers hung and stood in the kitchen clutching my robe and — you guessed it — sobbed.
Since then, my kids have helped me get the range in place (still needs its cord wired) and the microwave installed (still needs HVAC to hook it up to the new vent) and we brought in the rest of the lower cabinets. I’ve hung some of the cabinet doors and fought with that crooked wall. I managed to trim out the pocket door between kitchen and laundry room, reinstalled baseboards in there, and we are no longer going to the laundromat every week. Huzzah!
But alas, I could not get everything else in the kitchen sorted out before the wood floor guys had availability, so we had to shift the temporary kitchen stuff back into the kitchen area and it is a nightmare.
Also, yes. I fully planned on tearing out the rest of the engineered floor and doing the hardwood install myself.
LOL, cute.
A little crew showed up on Tuesday and look what they accomplished in two days. It would have taken me two months:
It’s this hardwood from Home Depot (not an affiliate link) and I’m pretty happy with it. Because it’s a big box offering, there are some tiny pieces and we’re still scrambling to find a stair nose that matches or can be stained to match. But it’s really pretty in person and is soooooo much nicer than what I had there before.
As these things do, the new floor has highlighted just how badly my whole house needs repainting and how badly beaten up my banister and newel posts are (balusters still missing from when my youngest passed out on the stairs due to low blood sugar). If I can get my brain to stop obsessing about it, that will be a project for next year.
Every night I get into bed after working on the kitchen anywhere from three to eight additional hours after work feeling like I’ve made no progress whatsoever. I have to constantly remind myself that I did this to myself. This helps me keep my chin up because if I made this mess, maybe someday soonish I can make it less of a mess.
Linkalicious
If you are also tall and cannot find affordable joggers, may I recommend these? (Affiliate link! They do come in shorter inseams too) I have them in all three colors and I wear them at work every day because video calls to do not include my lower half.
Did I link the new Brat Pack movie yet? I think I did, but I’m so excited.
This was fun and interesting! How tennis balls became yellow. Are they yellow? I’d call them green, but whatever.
Finding a movie that all my kids, including the adult ones, want to watch is hard! Our last movie night was Godzilla Minus One and I was pleasantly surprised. I expected a monster smash movie, and it is, but it’s also super character driven and good. Just turn off the awful dubbing and read the subtitles instead.
I guess this list is watch-heavy, but I really enjoyed The Pursuit of Love (limited series with Lily James) on Amazon Prime.
xo
p.s. Title & subtitle courtesy my current theme song: Trashfire