I Love What You've Done With My Kitchen!

Three and a half years ago we bought the house of our dreams. Five bedrooms, three baths, living room, dining room, den. Hardwood throughout with brick exterior and large backyard. And a MAJOR fixer-upper.

We bought the house "as is" and got an amazing deal on it. In addition to needing cosmetic work throughout, the banister for the stairs was missing, the hot water heater near the end of its life, and our homeowner's insurance told us we had to replace the roof within the first month of occupation in order to keep our coverage.

Various parts of our home have been named for the folks who have helped us renovate over the years. It all started when we named Bonner Hall (the entryway) after the dear friend who helped us find the house. CrossWalk Way honors the two men from our Bible class who built a new banister and fixed some of the steps. The Craddock Parlor (living room) and Lawson Suites (upstairs bedrooms) were painted by great friends. All the wiring is affectionately known as Chris's Clever Electrical Fixes (much of the wiring had been poorly rigged by the former owner), and the Parker Palace is the game room created upstairs when Mark and the boys took out some walls to make room for our growing boys and their friends to hang out.

Now begins the final phase of the renovations: the kitchen. Note the faux brick linoleum (which is peeling up in a couple of places and tripping people, especially me) and sad ceiling fan. The hand-crafted solid wood cabinets look lovely, but the craftsman was past his prime when he did these and many of the doors are not square, leaving gaps between them and the cabinets causing the doors to swing open when the fan is on.

As I sit in the Craddock Parlor, workers are scraping off the 3 layers of wallpaper that, by the looks of them, date back to 1969 when the house was built. Each layer was painted a new color before the next wallpaper went up. The final layer had two coats of paint: the peachy taupe color it was when we bought it and the lovely pale yellow we slapped on over it to tide us over until we could finally redo the kitchen.

When I looked at the kitchen in the midst of the demolition work, I said to our trusty craftsmen, "I love what you've done with the kitchen," I don't think they knew how much I really meant it!