When my husband and I first walked into the kitchen with our realtor, visions of an update immediately sprang to mind.
I saw painted cabinets, fun hardware, pretty pendant lighting and gorgeous countertops.
I knew upon first look that the kitchen had great bones and amazing potential...it was just a little dated.
And a lot not my style.
Don't even get me started on the white tile with white grout. Who decided that would be a good idea?! I would love to meet them.
And then hand them the bottle of bleach and toothbrush that I've spent waaaaaay too much time with over the last three years.
But it was well designed and nice and roomy for our quickly expanding brood.
It just needed a little spruce up.
And a ton of elbow grease.
But the truth is, that's our style.
Andy and I are the quintessential DIYers.
We grumble and moan through the process, but we absolutely love the finished product 100 times more simply because we know that WE did the work.
Somehow, sitting on our patio and looking out at the landscaped yard is so much more satisfying knowing that it was our sweaty selves who laid that sod in the summer sun. (That's our friend Jon that we conned into helping. Note the baby in the pack and play!)
While we had certainly done our fair share of projects together, the sheer workload involved in painting cabinetry WHILE parenting three kids 3 and under...
...well, that made me break into a sweat more than once.
In fact, it may have induced a mild panic attack at one point. Just maybe.
The reality is, that while adults can wait until 9 p.m. to eat dinner (take out, naturally) after the work is done and cleaned up, twin one year olds and a three year old aren't exactly so patient.
And they can't put themselves to bed.
Or even wipe their own....
noses.
And the littlest still has therapy three times a week.
And the husband has a business trip on the other side of the country sometime in the middle of this mad dash rush.
And...well...life doesn't pause while you're trying to knock out a fairly labor intensive project.
Painting...particularly something as large scale as kitchen cabinetry...isn't exactly something you can stop mid-brush to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
And little sticky fingers are certainly unwelcome anywhere NEAR drying paint.
Luckily, I knew the pros would be installing the countertops. So that was one task off our plate.
Knowing that this project had high Bicker Potential, Andy and I tried to stave off some of the tension by talking about it ahead of time.
Late one night, after the littles were in bed, our feet up on the coffee table, hot fudge sundaes in our laps, our conversation went a little something like this:
"This project is going to be insane. None of it is going to go as smoothly as we would like. So let's try and just go with the flow and not hate each other at the end of it."
"Deal."
While that may seem simplistic and silly, it really has helped so far.
We just knew that this wasn't going to be a project reminiscent of our pre-three-kids-in-two-years days where we could work uninterrupted and for as long as we we wanted/needed.
And somehow, being open and upfront about lowering our expectations...and laughing that surely someone will tip over a gallon of paint at some point...is helping.
Even in the planning, as I try to order hardware that I can't seem to find in the quantities I need...or trying out 15 different shades of white (who knew?!)...or trying to figure out how to still make meals during it all...
We're going with the flow.
We're making it work.
We're trying to laugh and not freak out.
Even though the temptation is certainly there.
Hopefully that feeling of relative flexibility and calm extends as we're actually in the trenches of kitchen updating.
No kitchen is worth strife.
But it's certainly worth the elbow grease.
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