This Too Shall Pass

Back in February, the sink in the kitchen backed up and we had to have a plumber come out and fix it. He ran a snake, found the clog and got everything working again. A few days later, Jordan noticed that water seemed to be seeping up under the laminate floor. The plumber came back and discovered that the pipes behind the sink had corroded and caused a leak. The insurance company had a water clean-up company come out and assess the damage. They discovered that the water had damaged the floor, the wall and the cabinets where the pipe ran. However, it was determined for various reasons that in order to fix the damage, the ENTIRE kitchen would have to be gutted and rebuilt. Like the whole thing. No more oven, no more stove, no more sink. They moved the refrigerator and microwave into the laundry room so we could at least still access those but otherwise we were out of luck.

The process started on March 4 and finally finished on April 13. A couple people came and boxed up everything in our kitchen and then they started ripping stuff out. The process was further complicated one week in when they discovered asbestos in the floor. Since I was very pregnant, they advised that we actually move out while they dealt with the asbestos. We thought we were just going to have to suck it up and figure out how to pay for a hotel room for a few days, but then Jordan's aunt offered to let us stay with her, which was wonderful!! Once the asbestos was cleared out, the tear out continued until we had nothing but a square concrete room resembling a bunker. It stayed that way for three weeks while the restoration company waited for all the new stuff to come in - cabinets, flooring, counter tops, etc. The girls actually thought it was kind of cool since they could run around in there and it echoed so much :) The original completion date was March 27, and the project manager was pushing his team hard to get done before Reagan arrived since my due date was April 9. I tried to tell him baby would be arriving long before that but he was still hopeful. Unfortunately, the completion date kept getting pushed back until I stopped even asking anymore! He called me on March 25 to ask me how everything was going, and the conversation went something like this:

Bill: "So how is everything going with you?"
Me: "You mean with the baby?"
Bill: "Yes"
Me: "Well, she arrived last Friday"
Bill: "WHAT?!"
Me: "Yep, she's here!"
Bill: "Wow, you weren't kidding about having early babies were you?"
Me: "Nope"

I can't even begin to describe what a crazy tough six weeks it was, especially once Reagan arrived. On one hand it was nice that we could justify being a little freer with eating out but being so limited with our budget made that difficult! We did what we could with the microwave and got some help from the ward on a couple nights. I tried to come up with meals I thought we could easily do only to usually find it was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. For instance, one night I thought we could do pancakes on the griddle, which we could just plug in on the floor. However, you don't really think about all the little things you need, like a spatula, a spoon and a mixing bowl. It took me a half hour to comb through boxes and find everything we needed to even start cooking. It was really frustrating. We mostly survived on corn dogs, microwave pizzas and Stouffer's meals. Sad but true. Even making sandwiches for lunch or getting cereal in the morning was an issue. We spent a fortune on paper products and had to wash what little actual utensils we did use, like a sharp knife, in the laundry sink or in the bathtub.

And then there was the actual construction. The noise made life with a newborn baby interesting, and at some point I had to just stop caring about all the random men wandering in and out of my house from 6 am to 5 pm every day. More than one of them saw me nursing in all my glory on the couch when they had to ask some random question or get something approved. Don't get me wrong - Envy, the restoration company, and the project manager, Bill, were awesome!! They did everything they could to make it easier on us. But at some point, there's just no way to make six weeks of renovation easier!!

Thankfully, we survived. And we figure if we can survive this, we can survive anything! I think we did a pretty good job of just rolling with the punches and trying to laugh about it as much as we could. I actually made the laughing part a lot easier one afternoon ... since there were people wandering in and out all the time, the door was open a lot and we got a lot of bugs in the house. We sometimes have these HUGE (like three inches long and fat!) bumblebee looking things that fly around our yard, and one of them got in the kitchen one day. Madison saw it first and came running in the living room screaming. I went in and saw it flying against the window. I didn't want to try and shoo it to the door since I didn't know if it could sting so I just grabbed a shoe and swung at it. I connected and sent that guy to his maker but unfortunately, the shoe kept right on going through the window!! The whole bottom half shattered. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! At first I was totally shocked and had no idea what to do. Then I thought, "Well, I know a guy who does restoration" and called Bill. He was so nice about it and sent his guys out that evening to board up the window. Then he got a glass company to come in and replace the window at cost. I'm so grateful for his help! I was thinking about how my attitude really helped in that process. If I had've been complaining and whining the whole time, he probably wouldn't have been very inclined to help me out with the window. But because I had tried to be nice and positive throughout the process, I felt perfectly able to call him and ask for help and he was more than happy to give it. Definitely something to remember in the future!

In the end, it all worked out, and the kitchen looks great! I kind of wish it had've happened six months ago :) Having a full-size oven the last couple weeks has been awesome!!! While it hasn't always been easy, we're so grateful to Jordan's family for letting us live here and making things a lot easier for us financially!

Getting ready to tear everything out (the floor was already gone). In reality, the only section of flooring and cabinets that was actually damaged was the part right by the dishwasher. But because they found asbestos in the floor, they had to take out all of it and because the cabinets were custom built 50 years ago just for that house, they couldn't match them and had to just replace all of them. The construction guys were actually really impressed with the quality and custom nature of the old cabinets - they kept commenting that you just don't see that kind of quality and workmanship anymore.

Somehow I didn't get a picture of the total emptiness after they took the backsplash tile off but this is close.

My window mishap

Cabinet installation. Funny story here too - the cabinet guy, who was a really nice old man, drilled through one of the water lines when he was installing the cabinets. I was in the living room and I heard him suddenly yell, "I have to turn the water off right now!" Madison ran in there and yelled that it was raining in the kitchen! That set things back a little bit as they had to replace the dry wall in one section of the wall and re run the pipe. The guy felt really bad but I just told him it went right along with everything else that had happened!

Most of the cabinets installed except for the ones waiting for the new drywall and paint to dry

New countertops

They were able to reuse the old butcher block from the island.

FINALLY finished!! (although when the plumber came back to hook the old dishwasher back up, he discovered it had a leak. So we still don't have a dishwasher and probably won't before we move. But at least we can cook!)