My Transient Friend

I'm going to try to get back into the blogging thing again. But since I have lost our camera, pictures are harder to get onto the computer.  I've been using my phone, but it's just not the same, in my opinion.

I'm backing way up to sometime in August. I don't think I've told many people about the time I brought a transient person home to stay for a few days. We were in the middle of the kitchen getting the new cabinets when this happened, so all we had was the refrigerator and stove, if I remember correctly. Dorella, whom I began referring to as my transient friend, was just grateful for a place to stay and didn't mind that we didn't have a full kitchen. But let me tell you the whole story.

One Thursday at work (keep in mind that I worked at our church) one of the pastors got a phone call from this person that had scheduled a meeting that day. She was just passing through town for the day and had wanted to meet with him to talk about a program she was starting. The phone call was a bit frantic as she had just been

Little Jo's Room

As you well know, what is supposed to be Little Jo's room later this year became the holding spot for all of our kitchen stuff during the remodel. Since the kitchen is finished, I finally got all of the kitchen stuff moved out of the room, and put some real furniture in there. (Hint: pay attention to the walls in the following pictures; there will be a quiz at the end.)

I think the first piece of furniture we acquired was the black changing table. It was a yardsale find along with a Bob jogging stroller. It is my hope to eventually

The Kitchen Finale

Finally, the house is coming back together! Not just the kitchen, but everything else as well. I probably will only cover the kitchen in this post, so look for another update soon on the rest of the house. Unfortunately, the following pictures don't show a beautifully, well-put-together kitchen or house, but they do show the progress and current state of things.

The granite kitchen counter top was

The Kitchen - Trying to Stay Positive

It has officially been 30 days since we started our kitchen tear-out. That means 30 days without a kitchen sink or dishwasher. It was about 15 days without any appliances or running water in the kitchen. And it's been 31 days without a kitchen table, or any furniture for that matter, in the dining room, living room, and hallway area.
It's getting a little old, I must say. We got running water back in the kitchen around day 16 in the form of hooking the refrigerator water line back up - so we've had ice and drinking water since then. Having the refrigerator back to keep things cold again, and not frozen, was a huge improvement. And even having the stove and oven to use, even minimally, has been very nice. Even with those big improvements, though, this weekend has been hard to keep positive and remember that the end is in sight.
As you know from the previous post, our upper cupboard doors were not ready when they installed the cabinets. We didn't bother putting anything in the cupboards at that point since they still had to come back and finish. The cupboard doors, with glass inserts, were finished installing a little over a week ago. They look very, very nice and I am further convinced that it was the right choice to get the glass insert.

I think that if the upper cupboard doors were

Putting the Kitchen Back Together

Even though it's only been 1 1/2 weeks since we tore everything out of the kitchen, I am ready for it to be put back together. We have been eating a lot of frozen foods, either plugging in the stove or microwave in the garage to cook them. We went out to eat at Olive Garden on Sunday so I could get some fresh greens - the salad was especially delicious!

The other evening, we re-heated some

The Kitchen Tear-Out

In January this year, I started researching and getting prices on re-modeling our kitchen. We looked at soooo many different ideas and found out just how limited we are in changing things too much. So after many months of discussing, looking at ideas, measuring, changing my mind, and looking some more, we finally got started on the kitchen in July.

The kitchen originally looks

No More Purple Walls

There has been a lot changing in the house this spring and summer. This spring, I finally got on the ball about finishing the removal of, and refinishing the hall-way closet that I had knocked out in November of 2015 when we couldn't get our couch down the basement stairs.

The original hallway and closet, as well as the purple fireplace wall.

My handiwork to