I am so grateful for recent progress in caring for our home!
In April, we were able to have the back of our house (and the detached garage) painted. You can see photos of the other sides being done in past years here and here. We have been blessed with wonderful and reasonable painters, and the week they were here to do the job was a perfect window in an otherwise very rainy season.
At our April book group, we got into discussing all the sorts of things we put up with that you’d fix if you sold the place, so why don’t you do it for yourself? I blurted out, “Like replacing our faucet?” Our kitchen faucet has been a struggle for at least a decade; it was very difficult to shut off, and required the perfect combination of gentle finesse and vehement pressure. To my comment, our neighbor, who is in the book group, said, “Oh, I need my faucet replaced too; we could do both of them together on Saturday!” My husband had deferred calling a plumber, but on learning he didn’t need to, was suddenly game.
The new faucet works, which feels totally luxurious. In the process though, they had to take the stuff out from under the kitchen sink, and it was rusty and awful. So a new project commenced, sanding and repainting that. This was so satisfying that I mentioned the yucky ceiling over the stove, and wondered aloud if the painters could repaint it. The painter was glad to, but easily convinced us that it was not much more to paint the trim, windows, and doors too. This had not been done since we moved in 32 years ago. The window sills were so chipped that I lined up stuff on them to hide their horribleness.
Wow! Now the kitchen is painted, and we’ve turned our sights to scrubbing everything else up. My husband deep cleaned behind the stove. Our original retro metal cabinets were frustratingly grody, but we learned that they came back spanking clean with full strength bleach. What a relief to bring them back to life! (It is a slow process, however, because it is a fairly noxious, and you can’t stay at it for long, plus you don’t want to cook in there again until that smell is aired out.) Every cookbook has been wiped off, the cupboards rearranged, extra kitchen stuff was packed up for our younger daughter, the pottery I’ve made was weeded and rearranged, and those window sills are gloriously empty!
I’m so delighted and grateful! I encourage you to be nice to yourself too, and fix something you’ve been letting go.
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7 Comments
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Spring renewal nothing like it! Enjoy
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You deserved this. Congratulations!
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Love the before and after photos. Positively inspirational!
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Looks tip top!
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Great news – Congratulations!
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How satisfying that must be!
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