The Joys of Remodeling
I’m in the throes of a kitchen remodel as I write this. Sheets of plastic drape my cabinets, and countertops. While white dust coats every surface, my tabletop is covered with things I’ve moved out of the kitchen to safety. My refrigerator is in the dining room, the stove and microwave in the back yard. This remodel has been a long time coming and is totally inconvenient. But it will be so worth it.
I figure in order to survive this, I need to look at the positives. And truly, my kitchen remodel isn’t all bad. One of the first and best perks amid the dust is that I don’t have to cook! We eat out almost every night, at least until I don’t have to dodge plastic to get into my cabinets, stove and and refrigerator. Never mind what the scale is telling me these days!
Another plus is seeing my family pull together to get through the inconvenience of a non-working kitchen. It puts things in perspective to recognize how spoiled we are when you figure that more than half the world lives like this every day. How blessed we are to have the resources to remodel! And we still have running water, even if we have to go into the bathroom to find it.
My husband and I are having fun working on a project together. Our teenage daughter enjoys helping us pick out the floor tile, paint colors, and countertop. Even our little chihuahua is in the thick of it, nosing around in all the dust, watching my husband’s every move as if he’s interested in learning to remodel his dog house! It’s nice to have a big project we can all work on together, enabling us to bond in ways we couldn’t in the status quo.
We know it’s only by God’s provision that we’re able to do this remodel. I pray for His grace each day so we don’t get impatient with each other or the inconvenience. I thank Him for his goodness to us, while praising Him for the gift of family and the good health to do this work ourselves.
How about you? Have you survived a remodel? Are you working on a project that brings with it inconvenience? What lessons are you learning along the way? How have you included your children in your project? Any survival tips you can share?
How about surviving building a house? That was painful. Not so much that we disagreed, but that there were so many decisions to make and we didn’t know what we were doing. If we built now, we would know what questions to ask and how to approach it.
My hubby and I have a system where we don’t work on things in the same room. I tried painting with him once. Never again. He doesn’t like home improvement work and it’s much easier if I do things myself. 🙂
Thanks for the great post.
LOL Cheryl! Yes, building a new house is a huge project! Prenty of room for disagreement, or at least differing ways of doing things. But I also think building a new house is so romantic. All your hopes and dreams are built right into those walls. I loved it when our house was built. Thanks for your comment!