The Chaos

I can honestly say, we're still smiling... most of the time.  I will be very happy to have a clean house again and know where everything is (besides the general location of "in a box in the sunroom"), but I think we're doing alright.  No massive breakdowns at least, except for the day we had to take everything out of the cabinets and I had no boxes, and no idea where to put it all, but it's all good now! A few tears from being overwhelmed, a pepsi, and a hug from my hubby fixed it all.  Oh, and going out to get boxes. haha!

I've got a date for the install of the new kitchen (SO excited!), so I'm feeling better about posting photos of the reno process, knowing that it will not be like this for much longer ... I wont post the date yet, just in case.... but trust me ... you'll know when it happens!! lol!

I cant say why, but this particular renovation has been the most stressful.  We've been here 2 years (yes, already!) and it's probably because I dont think anything we've done has had this wide of spread over the house.  Literally, our entire main floor feels affected. If not by being chopped apart and in disarray, then by the dust and dirt from the other parts being so.  Or the feeling of being incredibly cluttered because of items moved "for the time being".  Thanks goodness the upstairs has stayed mostly clean and dust free.

I'm lucky I've got such an amazing husband through all this.  I posted a photo on facebook when we started a few weeks ago of my "temporary" kitchen, and I'm posting it here too.  He is so wonderful, taking the extra hours to reconstruct a work space that honestly makes this whole process much more tolerable.  He plumbed in a new washtub sink in the middle of the room and reconfigured the upper cabinets into a rectangle to place the dishes and cooking supplies we need daily in, and he cut down the old countertops to fit on top so we have a work space.
Seriously.
Kind of blew me away.
He did this all after spending all day gutting the kitchen, dealing with gross mouldy cabinets, and heavy boxes that needed moving and throwing out.  As though he wasnt tired enough right?  But he wanted me to have a some kind of "normal" the next day... a place to plug in the coffee maker and microwave and such (thank the Lord, I need my coffee in the morning!)

So, here are some photos of the work he's been doing (I say "he" honestly, I'm not going to attempt to take any credit for any of this!), the mess we've been making, and hopefully the memories we'll both smile at some day looking back.

Emptying the cabinets before we had boxes was not the best idea ... a lot of this will got to charity.  I couldnt' believe how much "stuff" we have that we never use!

My temporary kitchen.  Unbelievable.  I married a keeper!

What was behind and under the sink cabinet.  The only one that had any water damage, which we had thought was from a junky window, but it turned out to be bad plumbing.

Replacing the kitchen window.  Wish I could keep this view of my hunky hubby always :)

New drywall in the kitchen

mudding the bulkhead, stilts are so handy!

What to do?

I've been hmmming and hawing over how to fix a mistake I made a few months ago.  You see, google changed it's data content limit (photos) and I was over the limit now, so I couldn't add photos to any posts anymore.  Seeing that I had some albums I didn't even know about on Picasa, I went and deleted them thinking it would free up a lot of space.  What I didn't realize, is that whenever I load a photo to my blog, it stored it in those Picasa albums, so when I deleted those albums,  I deleted all of my blog pictures!!  (*Insert Face Palm here*)
Rather than reload them all (I have 125 posts .... that would take a long time) I have just left them with big blank boxes.  I've debated;  do I delete all of those posts (pretty well up to the last 2) and start fresh, or do I just leave them and my readers can image the photos that were there ... ??  I'm open to suggestions.  Really. What would you do?

You'll notice I did reload all of my work photos on my Photography Blog (check it out here if you like.  And please 'Follow' it :) ). I figured photos would be important for a photographer to show off, and it took me a good full day to sort through my images again and get it back up and looking good.  I took that opportunity to weed out some of the photos I wasn't feeling represented my work now, and to refine how I wanted the blog to look for a while.  Maybe it was a good thing on that blog ... but now my personal one......  ??

So what's new?

The famous question ... what's new?  Probably a lot since my last post was in NOVEMBER.  What can I say?  Only what I said on that post ... life is busy, and I'd rather be enjoying it than blogging it.  But, with that said, I DO enjoy writing, so I'm not ready to give up on the blog either.

Let me see .... Christmas was great, as usual.  Lots of food, gifts, and time with family.

My work was CRAZY busy in November and December, which was fabulous and fun, but also exhausting.  I told my friend Ashley that come February,  I'd be bored again since they are naturally slower months for photography .. and true enough, I did and am saying that.


I cant say I was bored in January though.  We took a really nice family trip to California again, and we just rested at home the other weeks.

Disneyland!

Characters at Universal Studios

Transformers Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood

Dustin has kept going on the renovations .... the boys (studio) bathroom is now completely redone and new.  And we've figured out how to improve the entrance from the garage.  It involves moving the basement stairwell.  Pretty sure our sanity is officially gone out the window when Dustin and I both shrugged at that thought and said, well, then that's what we'll do.

Before

After

Our kitchen is in shambles right now.  My husband sweetheart handyman champion hero and knight in shining armour has made a temporary kitchen for me, complete with a washtub and running water for the few weeks we'll need to have this chaos in the kitchen.  Life is surprisingly "do-able" still with this temporary kitchen. 
The goal is for our new kitchen to be installed and working by March 31.  My birthday, and also Easter this year.  The plan was for us to host Easter for my side of the family, but my mom is happily on stand-by if we dont make it in time for that.

Kitchen photos to come when it's all done ;)