Well, though it’s hard to see in the midst of the mess we think that we are actually are making progress on the great and infamous Kitchen Project!

Some where along life’s way, a bit of dust was created…it’s hard to imagine how!

Looking at these next pictures I start to see progress.  (look in the upper left hand corner–the massive range hood is missing…)  We have been very glad that we’ve been trying to do some extra cleaning before we started this project, with the doors off you really notice all the stuff that is (normally) crammed into kitchen cupboards.  It was really strange at this stage, we all were constantly trying to shut doors that weren’t there!

On top of the left paint can are samples of laminate…Mom did more research on the counter top paint, and it is apparently a short term solution, so we are going to just get new laminate to put on the existing cabinets; but that is another thing that will have to wait until after Christmas (2 weeks to special order it…AFTER we decide what color to get!) But it will be nice to be able to get the full effect of the colors we already have before choosing a counter color.

On Tuesday it was time to start the painting part of the project.  Here’s what the ceiling looked like before:

Jonathan at his desk…he is taking advantage of the time and space while he has it, because the time is coming when it will be covered in plastic!

We moved as much furniture out of the room as conveniently possible, but with mainly big (and one built-in) computer desks it was mostly small stuff and a small couch.  The dog often lays on it and like to get up there to look out the window, but he was getting under-foot (try explaining ceiling painting to your dog…) and so we came up with this fix:

He actually stayed there for quite a while; not sure why since climbing down over the arm didn’t prove challenging at all later!  Maybe he was just comfy.

With Jonathan’s help approximately one third of our house was transformed into looking like this:

Now you know why Jonathan was soaking up time at his desk!

After all was said and done and a bit of a wash was applied to tone the “feathering” down a bit we are quite pleased with the result (which is hard to see in the picture)

                                   

Back in the kitchen we started to make some measurable progress.

We now have much of the plastic down and even part of the carpet showing in the pathway, and are planning on starting the staining process on Monday.

Along the way we also cleared out the Family room, taking the range hood to the garage and the extra couch to the basement, so that we would at least have the most part of one room for a sanctuary from the dreadful mess and clutteryness (I’m becoming quite a word smith eh?) of the rest of the house.

We are all getting to the point where we’re going to be really glad when the house is back to some semblance of order!  We think it will be worth it, but the interim is getting to be a bit tedious.  It would be really nice if we could, say, live somewhere else while the project is going on.  Then you throw in a few extra things, like trying to make real food to take to the potluck at church today before we went Christmas caroling, and it really gets interesting.

But through it all, God faithfully supplies His grace freely (our lifeline!) and though the countdown (fewer and fewer days left) continues we are making progress!

There have been several other interesting or important unrelated happenings too, but they will have to wait for another day.

Matthew

Soli Dei Gloria