Household Chaos!

Anyone who has visited our house knows that you enter through a hallway that can only be described as chaotic. Euphemistically, we think of it as our "mud room", the "puppy airlock" or even "another spot on the to-do list". Well, all of this changed this past week.
You will remember that Bob and I picked up a slew of cabinets that were being removed from JoAnn and Eric's house. How could you forget? I posted the excitement of offloading and schlepping in the dark and cold and snow... eventually all those cabinets wound up in a large stack in our living room. (We also had the pleasure of dining with JoAnn and Eric while their kitchen was transitioning. They had a large stack of large boxes and an interruption in "normal" life but it resembled ours so we felt right at home.)
Last week was so cold that Bob was unable to get his studio warmed up so he set to work and started to restore/instill order in our hallway.

We moved everything out: horse food, coats, seeds, old cabinets and shelves, boots, paint, drying vegetables, cleaning supplies, vases, etc etc.. This in itself took quite a while as there was more there than you'd think. We marveled at how much bigger the hallway really was under all that accumulation of stuff. Some of it got moved to the downstairs bathroom.

Temporarily, this made using the bathroom entertaining. Fortunately, Bob made quick work of the reconfiguration of the cabinets and within two days, we had a much more efficient and orderly hall.

Eventually, there will be shoji screens covering the shelves- much like the upstairs closet that Bob constructed for me. But in the meantime? What an improvement! The hall feels much wider and there are places to put all that stuff. It was a lot of measuring and puzzling for Bob to figure out just how to best assemble the cabinets but he did a great job. It's amazing how a project like this can transform a part f your house. I can't wait for Phase II.

Deja Vu All Over Again

As Bob and I struggled to lift tons of kitchen cabinets off of our pickup truck and onto the frozen tundra that is our current New England state of affairs, it occurred to us that we had done this before. Like seven years ago when we moved in: history does repeat itself.*

This is how we came to this particular episode in our lives. We have been bemoaning the state of our kitchen, especially the sink area. The particle board around the sink is soaked and exploding, the plastic sink is stained and nasty beyond description. Here, you see for yourself.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH! Awful! And that's after a good cleaning. (Those stains just don't come out anymore and the faucet is all chipped and it's beyond redeemable!) So when friends- who thankfully live close by (in another modern house)- offered their old(er) cabinets because they're in the midst of a kitchen re-do, we said "yes".

Let's just mention that poor Bob had to make three trips to pick up all those cabinets and it got colder and darker as we offloaded. Then we had to maneuver them all into the house. By default, they all wound up in the living room as it was the only available "free space". It's a good thing we celebrated Xmas last week!

These cabinets are in much better shape than ours but it will be a bit of a Chinese puzzle trying to fit them into our kitchen and its configuration. But hey! We're always up for a challenge.
In all honesty, if the only area we redo is the sink (and maybe replace some of our obnoxious cabinet doors which fold out in this wonky and deadly way), I'll be happy.

This area. That stupid dishwasher is going as we haven't even used it once and we just store dishes in it. And under that sink... I'm not even posting a picture of that! It's been leaking through the back of the sink for a while and there's some sort of leak from the pipes underneath. So tackling this area will solve several dilemmas.
Bob did take all the cabinets and counters and drawers, not only as a favor to the friends (thanks Joanne and Eric!) for thinking of us, but because he wasn't sure what part went with which piece.

These are the ones we're pretty sure we can't use: triangular corner cabinets and odd floating islands. But this is a small price to pay for things we were considering purchasing from Ikea or Home Depot. It may take a while, but I can't wait for our new kitchen! Oh, and warmer weather...

*No kidding! I just realized that January 3rd IS the anniversary of our closing! And it is going on our seventh year here; time does fly and history does repeat itself.