State of the House Update: Soooo Close

After months of household upheaval, we are now able to count the weeks remaining without feeling overwhelmed. All but one of the rooms in the house that required remediation have been hallowed out, cleaned, repaired, and mostly put back to rights. The kitchen is the last item we need to resolve. We've got three weeks of waiting for countertops, and then two weeks of final activity and getting the kitchen to full functionality. For a process that began four months ago, this feels fantastic even as it triggers all kinds of impatience.

I think I would feel a little less "get on with it" if it weren't for the fact that the things that go in the kitchen have taking over the dining room and part of the family room (and the things that would go in that part of the family room are crowding up the living room). But the upstairs rooms are all fully settled, minus a few finishing touches. The tetris stacks of boxes and chairs is like that one loose hair that brushes against your arm that you can never pull away. And the temporary kitchen is set up on my art fair table, standing sentinel over yet more boxes. For a neat freak like myself, this is agony. I have become slightly attuned to the chaotic jumble, but being so close to finally getting everything back where it belongs is making me twitchy.

Getting my studio back after five weeks without it has been clutch. Having this space for my art, writing, and consulting is definitely a soothing balm to the stressful energy surrounding the kitchen. Also, the peace of mind granted with the remediation of the mold in this room in particular.... I'm not going to lie: I felt a little betrayed when we realized late last year that my studio likely had significant nastiness in the walls, something that my doctor thinks has been significantly impacting my health. To have created this space for me to create and operate and rest as my whole self turn out to be working against me the whole time felt particularly cruel. And also in keeping with my grand tradition of stumbling into hazards.

Another way I've coped is to make use of the blank walls I had all around me. You can see little pieces of my art peeking through the cabinets covering some of the kitchen walls. I did not take advantage of all my blank walls during the remediation process. I didn't want us to spend more time and paint doing multiple coats to cover up any art I did on the bare walls that we didn't want to keep around forever. But the kitchen was perfect. Those blank spaces would be covered with cabinets or backsplash. So I had fun playing with a much larger canvas than I typically use, trying out techniques that work for me in smaller scale to see how they worked scaled up. It's fun to have elements of that still playing hide and seek as the kitchen completes its remodeling journey.

This final leg of House Chaos is extra exhausting. We're close enough to the finish line to taste it but far enough away that we've got more energy and cope reserves to dig up and put to use. At some point, we do need to remodel our bathrooms (they are 35 years old and showing it), but it's going to be at least a year before I'm ready to invite this kind of insanity on the house again.