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.