Welcome to the pandemic

 Anyone else feel like they haven't had a good deep breath in a while? I guess that's pandemic life. I am finally in a place where I feel like I can handle each separate aspect of my life on my own - it's been a struggle. After having our first child I fell into a bad bought of post-partum depression that changed us as a family. After working very hard and getting the help I needed, I eventually got to a place where I could say I've overcome it - then the pandemic hit and life suddenly had to be adapted again. So here we are. Everyone for themselves, doing what they deem is best for them and their family. It's new. It's hard.

Come with me as I try to find normalcy in my home decorating and renovations!

There hasn't been many projects tackled over the last few years, but there was one that felt like the never-ending project. THE KITCHEN.

One day I grabbed a sledge hammer and invited over my friend Jen. We took down the wall between my kitchen and living room. Jen helped me relocate the thermostat, the water line for the fridge, and a couple electrical outlets. It was a messy project that lasted longer than I would have liked. And although I'm proud of the final product, I would not do that again!

Let's sum up this mammoth project;

1. I ordered new cabinets from Ikea because trying to make my existing cabinets go from a u-shape kitchen to a new l-shape kitchen seemed like too much work - in reality it would have been much less work than installing all new ones like I did. 

2. We had to build the cabinets in the order they were being put up because we had literally no space to put things while we did the cabinets. 

3. The uppers were installed first (on one weekend), and the lowers were done on another weekend. It was a non-stop build and my husband is still upset with me for forcing him to do that!

4. I didn't have a sink. For quite a while. After installing the cabinets we realized our son was upset with being shipped off every day and we needed to spend some family time with him. Eventually I got the new counters cut, and I installed the new sink while Chris was at work. There was no more living with washing dishes in the bathroom!

5. We installed new floors at the same time as the kitchen cabinets. That was an interesting feat. My brother (bless his heart) helped us out with that, and it went as smoothly as it could have I think.

6. There was a bit of wall left from the wall we took out and it needed to be drywalled - this is where I got fed up and hired someone to do it for me. I hate drywall. Not for me.

7. Eventually I put end panels and toe-kicks on the cabinets - this took like 4 months for me to do. I'm not proud of how long that took.

8. I did some drywall work. Yes. I know. Why?! Because it was going to be behind a backsplash and I really didn't give a shite about how it looked! 

9. Finally I installed the backsplash in the kitchen! (this was almost 1 year since starting the project aka taking the wall down)

10. The grouting and caulking of the backsplash took another month or so. Only judge me if you've done your own entire kitchen reno!

So November (I think. Maybe October) 2019 until now. October 2020. We have a completed kitchen. No I do not have pictures because we still need to paint the wall that was drywalled, so hang tight for that!

I learned a lot during that process. Here's the main things;

- Don't forget about family time when doing renovations - plan to take breaks during a large scale project

- Even if you think you can pull off the project in a tight timeline, assume you need more time. It's hard to estimate the timing of something you've never done before

- Have a storage plan if you have a small house. We should have had a storage bin or something in our driveway. If we had the extra storage, we wouldn't have had piles of stuff that were moved from our bedroom back out into the living room every night - that got old really fast as you can imagine

- For large projects like this, you really need the whole family on board. My marriage took a hit because I wanted to do the renovation and my husband got sick of it really quick

- Hire out the little things you can't stand. I hated drywall, so I hired someone for that. If you hate tiling or flooring, get someone to do that for you

- Have friends and family help you, but I will caution you - if you do not choose someone who is of a similar mind set, they will just drive you crazy - type As don't mix with type Bs in projects like this

- Finally. For the most part, get girls to help. In my experience girls have some serious hustle when it comes to hard labour

Here's some photos of the project - I didn't document it very well, so I apologize. I'll go into depth on each of these parts in future posts.

Couple shout outs for their help in the kitchen project; my mom for watching Gavin every time I had something to get done, my Dad for helping with the cabinets late into the night, my brother for helping us with the flooring, Jen for helping with all the electrical, Colin for doing my drywall and for giving me a crash course to do the areas in the backsplash by myself, Mike for helping frame out the new wall, Brandon for installing the new sink faucet, Lino for helping with the cabinets, and finally my husband - for not divorcing me!