We're finished...well, sorta

If homeownership has taught me nothing else, it’s that the work is never done. You fix or replace one thing, only to find another waiting in its place. Or, updating one item leads you to realize just how terrible others are. Example? Our kitchen.

You may recall our summertime painting extravaganza, what with the laborious hours with paintbrush in hand, new handles and hinges and other varied tasks. You may also recall that we painted our cabinets off-white, which looked quite terrible against our already-terrible white laminate countertops and cream-colored walls. It was a major fashion faux pas if I’ve ever seen one in a kitchen.

Fast forward four months and a lovely sight greets me as I make my oatmeal each morning. It’s pure heaven. I love the brown walls, yummy grayish-brown Formica countertops and the fact that everything no longer clashes. The journey to Wednesday’s new addition wasn’t easy, but it was totally worth it.

Adam and I spent Tuesday evening unscrewing and removing the old counters, which was much, much harder than we had ever dreamed. You see, the genius who installed our kitchen cabinets put in the cabinet bases, attached the counters with countless screws and THEN finished out the sides of the cabinets. What this meant for us was it was impossible to remove the countertops, which were firmly attached to the cabinet bases and inaccessible from the outside. After some cussing and head scratching, we realized that surgery was our only option. With Adam’s jigsaw in hand and my fingers in my ears, we began cutting holes in the countertops to access the screws below. It was ALMOST comical, mostly because it was impossible to find the screws by blindly feeling along the splinter-encrusted boards. This is how I developed my newest nickname, “The Screw Whisperer” due to my uncanny ability to locate each of the many, many screws by hand.

After that hour-long ordeal, my next favorite task was up: hauling out the 20-foot slab of laminate to the garage. I’m just as strong as I look, so there were a lot of “breaks” involved in moving the counters less than 5 yards into the garage. There’s nothing stranger than a kitchen without a sink and countertops. I spent the rest of the evening catching myself before I threw a half-empty glass of water into the hole where a sink once resided or putting my cell phone on a counter that doesn’t exist. Really, I’m a huge fan of change. Huge.

I dreamt of horrible countertop-related disasters that night, only to be awoken by “The Call” to arrange for the district’s 2-hour delay due to the incredibly icy roads. School was eventually cancelled entirely, and Adam and I spent roughly 15 minutes that morning staring at the ceiling and trading possible horror stories.

“What if the truck with our countertops crashes and they’re ruined?”
“What if we have to live with no sink for a month?”
“What if they forgot a piece and have to drive back to Columbus?”

Also, what if we’re extremely paranoid? Everything went off without a hitch, and the counters were installed in roughly an hour’s time. My favorite part was watching them fuse the two pieces together with a contraption that appeared to be from a mad scientist. There were numerous paddles, wires and gauges that created an incredibly seamless joining of two separate pieces; very impressive.

After wiping the counters off at least four times to rid them of the dust that had set up shop, I stood back and was amazed…at how terrible the walls look.