I Know What you Did Last Summer

Good gravy (I have taken up saying this since Husband doesn't curse and I was the only one to blame for our household's junior potty mouths), it's Fall. And I still haven't shown you the before/during/after pictures of my kitchen update.

Before: greenish "marble" laminate counters with a yellowed fluorescent light cover--only one bulb working.

Carbon dating and a close examination of the many knife cuts evident on the laminate surface have led scientists to believe these counter tops date to the early Aquarius period or possibly late Happy Days epoch.

To save money on the almost airline-like add-ons involved in having a big box home improvement chain do this project, we removed the counter tops ourselves. I use the term ourselves very loosely, of course, in that Husband did it.

I thought we were well-prepared. Fortunately, they did not have a box on their billing slip for We Pulled out the Oven and OMGOMGOMG!! The workers even kindly looked away while I frantically vacuumed.

Because the gods of home improvement do not smile upon single-update efforts, we also decided to fix the ancient lighting in the ceiling.

My cousin "knew a guy" who actually turned out to be a great electrician and also managed to cut a hole in our ceiling that released a metric ton of icky insulation that had been brought over on the Mayflower.

After: A ceiling fan over our kitchen table and track lighting, of which half the bulbs have already burned out, thank you big box retailer.

With our new and improved lighting Husband was able to notice, for the first time, that the original two counter top sections did not match. He had them laying out on the driveway--because that's where country people are contractually obligated to store unwanted home fixtures--and said to me did you ever notice these don't match? I responded Only every single day for the last 14 years.

OK, back to the counter tops, because they are the piece de resitance of the room. We went with a blue speckled Corian--with built in sink, ahhhh. Of course, I wouldn't be the daughter of a plumber if I didn't also take the opportunity to install a sweet new faucet.

To summarize, this project had multiple steps, including a get rid of the fluorescent light and make a mess in the kitchen phase, a oh !@#$^ we better get a guy to patch that hole phase, a good grief what did your Dad do to the plumbing under the sink phase, a from the smell of it you really need a new garbage disposal phase, a basic clean-up phase and the inevitable wow this cost more than we thought it would phase.

Here's one of my favorite after pictures. All the crap that goes on that counter is behind the camera on the table. I just took this picture to make you think it's all nice like that right now.

So there you have it. What we did last summer in our kitchen. I was just getting ready to write something suggestive about Husband and open counter space and then I remembered that my Mom reads this blog, so The End.