Two rooms in my house are completely clean and put together. Unfortunately, they are the “formal” living room and dining room. The kitchen is getting close, though. DH still has to wire up the under cabinet lighting, phone jack, and cable jack. I’ve been working hard to put everything away and clean up. My dining room has been stacked up with the contents of the kitchen cabinets for nearly two months. I can’t wait to have this finished!

DH just called to tell me that the enormously large check I wrote to the countertop installer had an error – I wrote the number differently in box vs. text. I’m having a hard time getting worked up over it and can’t figure out exactly what it is he wants me to do at this point.

I’ve been a prisoner in the house with those guys for the last two days. They were here ALL day (until 7:30 on Monday night!) and showed up three hours late yesterday. I finally called after waiting 2 hours and was told, “we’ll be there in 5 minutes”. An hour later they made it here. I wish I could work like that and still get paid tons of money.

Anyway, countertops are in, tile is done, and the rest of the work is on DH to finish. Well, he thinks something is wrong with the cooktop install, so maybe countertop guy will need to come back and re-cut the opening for the cooktop. This will make a huge mess all over again, so I guess I shouldn’t bother to clean up from the last mess yet.

I’m very tired of the mess. I’m very tired of the whole thing. The end is so close, yet so far away.

The drywall is up, patched, sanded, and ready to paint.

So, tonight and tomorrow we paint. Cabinets arrive via big uHaul truck along with my IL’s on Friday night. I’ll be at my folks’ house with the boys to make consignment sale-related appearances at some local kid’s events. DH & IL’s will install cabinets on Saturday and I’ll be helping as soon as I get back Saturday afternoon.

We finalized countertop choices (Atlantic Black) and began backsplash musings. Granite guy is working up quote and we need to sign contracts/give deposit tomorrrow or Friday for him. He can template early next week after appliances come (hopefully next Monday!) and install countertop after we return from London.

This might all be finished by mid-July!

This kitchen thing is already stressing me out and it’s just begun. We can’t find ANYTHING. Making coffee requires 8 trips around the dining room to find everything. Thing One and Thing Two keep asking the same damn questions over and over and whining that they liked our old kitchen (they do that whenever ANYTHING changes).

The electrician was supposed to come today so I’m sitting here waiting and didn’t go to the gym or shopping like I wanted to. Apparently DH called at 8:15 to tell me they weren’t coming today but left a message on my cell instead of calling the house. I JUST got the message at 10:20. My morning is wasted. I have to go and get the boys from soccer camp at noon.

If we were hiring out all the work, I think this could be a 2-3 week job, tops. Since DH is doing most of it himself, it’s going to drag to twice that, or more. I’m impressed and glad that he CAN do all this stuff, but living in this mess is going to kill me.

These dreary, rainy days are about to do me in. My kitchen has even less lighting that it did two weeks ago and with no sun, it’s DARK in there. I have a bedside lamp on the counter with the shade off so I can see to wash dishes.

Things One & Two are buck-nutty wild and I’m tempted to send them out in the rain and mud anyway. It won’t kill them, just make a huge mess for me to clean up. DH is still sick and snotty and I think one of us needs to sleep in the spare room tonight.

I’ve lost my motivation to do much of anything. There’s no point to keeping the house picked up or clean. Stuff is just stacked and stuck everywhere. I have no pressing sale-related work to do for another month or so. Every time I walk in the office I sit down and surf to random time-wasting websites and I need to quit.

Oh, someone is screaming again…

Mother’s Day was uneventful. I got memory boxes the boys made at Lowe’s, my ratty own potholders that I sent into preschool not knowing what they were needed for, returned to me with a painted handprints on them, flowers that I can’t smell, and a GPS watch for running that DH ordered using my email address that hasn’t arrived yet.

I think my allergy attack late last week was actually a cold and it’s still lingering. Saturday I had a low grade fever and stuffed myself full of all sorts of OTC meds. Dinner was take-out Chinese since I thought hot and sour soup sounded good. We ended up at Max and Erma’s for dinner last night and I’m suppose to go to Mom’s Night Out with MOMS tonight. Thing One and Thing Two are signed up for Parent’s Night Out at the Y on Friday, so LOTS of restaurant eating for me. Good for the taste buds, bad for the scale.

MD consisted of DH and the boys ripping out the kitchen ceiling and the sheetrock off a wall while I read web sites about my camera.

I need to post pictures of the kitchen. Removing the ceiling revealed some interesting plumbing issues from when the last owners re-did the master bath and I just hope that it doesn’t turn into a major problem. Electrician is coming this week. Cabinets are glazed but not finished but it doesn’t matter since we’ll be away for Memorial Day and the weekend after. I need to clean up all the guest spaces so the (family) cabinet installing crew will have room to sleep. BIL #1 offered to come help install, which is great, but they are going to WDW the second week of June, which pushes cabinet install back even further. We still don’t know about going to Europe in June, which would also push cabinet install back.

I want to learn more about photography and to that end, have a stack of books out from the library and a bunch of websites bookmarked. I have a Canon S3IS, so not a full DSLR, but not a crappy P & S either. The S3 is great outdoors but terrible indoors on auto mode, so I’m trying to learn enough to take it out of auto and get some results that I actually like.

I’ve also gotten my scrapbook stuff out again and want to work more on that. I’ve got about 2 months before consignment sale work kicks back into high gear and I at least need to finish my Disney albums, never mind Thing One and Thing Two’s baby book.

I ran this morning on the treadmill even though I don’t feel great and registered for a group personal training class that meets once a week in June and July. If I’m paying for the class, I have to go, right?

One bank of cabinets is totally out. The soffit above is gone too, and the old tile backsplash is down.

FIL will have new cabinets done in 2-3 weeks. We’ll be away over Memorial Day and the next weekend and hopefully the weekend after that, the new cabinets can go in. Unless of course, DH and I are somewhere in Europe. He says Frankfurt is the first week of June, then London the second week, and Paris is the third. Even more a reason to hope for London or Paris!

Anyway, before cabinets can go in, the rest of the old cabinets have to come out, electrician needs to do his thing, and drywall/new ceiling need to go up. Sink is ordered, can lights are ordered. I’m in the process of moving the rest the contents of my upper cabinets to boxes in my dining room. DH is trying to keep the lowers and the island in place as long as possible so I have sink, dishwasher, and cooktop.

We still need to choose new decorative lights, choose drawer pulls & knobs, and choose new backsplash. I think we finally decided to try to match new hardwood to existing to cover the gaps instead of changing part of the floor to cork or tile.

Best case scenario? Everything is in place by end of June. I’ll be happy if it is all done by end of July.

Our economy stimulating tax rebate money is in our account! Hmmm… how should we stimulate the ecomomy?

It looks like we’ll have a new kitchen by the end of summer. It’s only been a year since we started talking seriously and DH started drawing layouts.

After thinking about several options, the layout is not changing dramatically. The refrigerator is moving and the island is shifting a bit, but nothing earth shattering. We’re keeping a separate cooktop in the island and wall oven. Sink and dishwasher aren’t moving, so hopefully no major plumbing work.

FIL is just about done building cabinets and then will glaze & finish them. He told us last weekend that he was not going to let us pay for any part of them, including the hardware. We were expecting to at least pay for materials and are thrilled at their generousity. Since they’ve been helping both BIL’s with their new houses, I think they feel a bit guilty that they don’t do much for us.

The appliances are already ordered so we can take advantage of a small rebate. We’re keeping our fridge, but everything else will be new. We’re putting in microwave/wall oven/warming drawer combo instead of a double oven. Our microwave died last month so now we have a dorm-sized one sitting on 2×4′s resting on top of the existing wall oven.

I think we’ve settled on countertops. DH really wants granite and I’m almost convinced. We’re looking at one of the black colors which hopefully will be pretty stain resistant and low-maintainence, if there is such a thing when it comes to granite.

We need to decide on silgranite vs. stainless sink, lights for over the island and table, paint color (blue?), design for tile backsplash, and finalize how we’re going to fix the floor. Our hardwood is fairly new, and moving the island will leave some gaps. We’re thinking of redoing the whole “work space” between island and cabinets with cork tiles, we just need to decide exactly where the transition back to hardwood will be.

I’m stressed. DH and FIL will be doing a lot of the work. We’ll need some drywall work and I don’t want to deal with that. I just want it DONE and my new appliances in.

The thought did cross my mind, right after I asked DH, “what was that?”

earthquake!