Dear So and So

[OakLeaf]

We got bogged down just picking everything out! It's not that we had trouble agreeing on stuff, there's just so much of it, from so many different sources, and you have to be in one store imagining how their stuff is going to look in the same room with the stuff you looked at in another store across town three days ago. Aaaaugh. Maybe it will finally happen next year.

[Crankin]

I absolutely hate anything to do with picking out stuff for the house. Of course, I like nice stuff, but for so long I abdicated all of this to DH. He knew everything about houses when we got married and I had no involvement at all with picking out things like window treatments and flooring until very recently. When I finally went with him, to pick out stuff for our bathroom and kitchen remodel in this house, we were so rushed (it was after work) and everything we picked was not available, so we ended up choosing the same counters and cabinets for the bathroom as in the kitchen. It doesn't look bad, just the same, which is boring. And, when presented with the blueprints for the bathroom, I said, "yea, fine," and I hate one of the design features. Me looking at a blueprint is like a blind man trying to read print! And while I love our huge shower with a bench, I am afraid not having a tub in the master bath might hurt us when we go to sell. I hate making long, drawn out decisions, and when I shop, I see what I like and buy. Generally, when I have ideas about what to do, they are right, but then I let DH or a professional take over. I do like shopping for furniture, though.

[lph]

We luckily have somewhat the same taste when it comes to redecorating, so no big fights, though we do regularly disagree. We landed on a nifty solution for this kitchen, since we ended up spending so much time discussing which one of the two countertops/dresser fronts/yadda yadda we liked did we actually want to BUY - he got the final say on the fronts, I got the final say on the counter tops, he got the backsplash, I got the wall colour, etc.

[malkin]

Our kitchen is a 'swath of desolation' as well. The living/dining and spare bedroom are also, because they will get new flooring. The rest of the house looks like a unit on Storage Wars, piled with everything.

Most people can't believe that we would live in a house with kitchen walls made of cardboard for a year and a half...we took out the old cabinets and there were no walls back there. It was open to the studs--we covered most of it with some cheapie whiteboard stuff but there was a little open space at the top and above the fridge. It didn't bother me until the cat went in there and came out filthy. So Brewer closed it up with pieces of cardboard boxes. Of course it doesn't look great, but I can be content thinking of my foremothers with dirt floors and no plumbing. Cardboard walls are better than no walls at all, right?

In the living room, when we moved in and ripped out the dog pee carpet, the subfloor looked ok and we had the surface finished. The cats have now customized the surface to the point of splintering, which I also kind of didn't mind but I kept my path to the rugs when I walked around barefooted.

The last time anyone worked on the house, we had gone to Switzerland to visit my dad and when we got home completely exhausted and found the house a complete disaster, I thought I might need to be placed on a 72 hour psych hold, so I haven't been too eager to make another run at it.

The tide turned when I got to coveting a new piano, found what I wanted, and Brewer loved it too...of course it makes sense to replace the flooring BEFORE bringing a piano in, and of course it makes sense to destroy the kitchen at the same time--Brewer knows I may never agree to it otherwise--and I'm already overly busy and a little coo-coo adjusting to my new job, so going completely out of my mind seems unlikely. So here we are.

[lph]

The rest of the house looks like a unit on Storage Wars, piled with everything.

Oh yeah.

I only just this minute got a call from IKEA, who will be delivering our new kitchen stuff ASAP. But they weren't supposed to come for another hour, so I had to run around and find rugs for them to trample in on. And doing anything at this point involves shifting piles of other stuff. So finding a rug involved pulling it out from under the stove (as we've been using it to pull the stove around between uses), which involved moving the coffee percolator and water boiler which were balanced on top of the stove, which was pretty impossible because there was nowhere else to put them as the dining table is also our functioning kitchen counter and is half covered with assorted small stuff. Which may have something to do with the fact that dh gave away that set of drawers...

And lugging a packet of new flooring out of the way so that it doesn't get boxed in by 3 tonnes of IKEA-ware, I neatly managed to put in a huge scratch in the livingroom parquet flooring. Yippee.

And so it goes, indeed.

I'm actually so early on in the process that I'm looking forward to it, but I'm pretty sure that three weeks from now when we feel that we should have been done and still have siding to put up and drawer handles to attach and so on and so on that I will be wondering what possessed us to ever start.

eta: I didn't mean siding, I meant trim. Don't really know the proper terms in English.

[malkin]

So the guys did the living room floor today and did some demolition in the kitchen--removed the whiteboard and the cardboard, leaving the walls--well, wall-less. Kind hearted Brewer didn't want to leave them in jail upstairs, so he moved everything away from the wall-less side making it impossible for a cat to get in up there. So imagine our surprise when we hear a plaintive mewing from the cellar. We discover a hole in the kitchen floor, just big enough for a cat to get through.

Getting into the cellar is complicated by the fact that the entrance is a door in the floor which is of course covered by furniture that belongs everywhere else. *eye roll*
All's well that ends well and that silly cat is back upstairs with his brothers, where I believe he will be staying until the work is all done and cleaned up.

[lph]

Aw :-)

Our Lyra just disappears outside in a huff through her cat flap whenever the noisy people start. Sometimes she'll just sit outside looking in, looking indignant. She also goes around complaining when we move her food bowls, again.

We managed to lay most of the new kitchen floor last night. I would be more pleased about it if it weren't for the fact that it's identical to the old floor, which we only pulled up because there would be gaps in it once we installed the new kitchen furniture, plus some minor damage in a corner. So now we've spent 4 hours, sweating and cussing, and the result is a lovely new floor that looks, well, just like the old one, only a little bit more of it.

I'm very pleased that I got to receive the IKEA stuff, though. I spent a full and happy hour organizing it into neat piles, according to when we'll need it without my guys around who would just laugh at me.