Adventures in Remodeling the Kitchen, Staring...my husband.

My sweet, non-dishwashing husband has been remodeling our kitchen for the past month. A very low budget, but drastic change in our little house. It always amazes me that men like him seem to just be able to do things. He can rewire the electric in our house, he can rebuild a motor...where the hell did he learn how to do that? What amazes me the most is his ability to withstand extreme frustration in what can only be described as what I'd call HELL without complaining. I'm a complainer. For example, last week we were hanging the drywall on the ceiling of our kitchen. I was to stand on a ladder holding up one end of a profound piece of 10'drywall, while he screwed in the screws. Sounded simple to him, a man with big grapefruit sized muscles on his biceps. I had tears in my eyes, groaning, moaning and protesting.

So the ceiling has been drywalled & primed, we put a massive oak barn beam up - I stained it yesterday and it looks so great, the stain is called Early American. We've removed half the kitchen cupboards & the soffet I think it's called? I hope to finish that today - that's my kind of job...get to use a little sledge hammer. As soon as we paint, we'll refinished the hardwood floors, right now there is hardwood in what used to be the dining room and linoleum from 1960 in the little kitchen.

One problem we ran into was the chimney that runs up along the kitchen wall. I wanted to remove all the old plaster, paint the bricks white and build shelves up along the sides. However, since we had to take out 2 pieces of duct work and some wiring, we needed to make a cabinet over the front of the chimney to hide some pex tubes & wires and whatever men seem to think we need. Why do we need heat in our bedroom honey? I want to paint my chimney!

I lost.

I did convince him however to build the cabinet big enough to fit my vacuum. In this old house we have no closets on the first floor, so my sweeper just goes from room to room as I need it, with no real home. My sweeper needed a home. It's own private sanctuary. He measured the sweeper, placed it inside - no problem, it'll fit. The cabinet is done. My sweeper doesn't fit. I know she didn't gain any weight...what's the deal? I guess he's not that perfect. Ms. Kenmore shouldn't have gotten her hopes up, I guess she's destined to be a free spirited hobo, keeping us company in the corner of the living room. Or I could just buy a smaller sweeper?