Living in Swiss Cheese

   As promised, here is a picture of my "living room". 

Obviously there is no living taking place in here except maybe for the neighbor's cat, David, who sneaks in through the doggie door at night and sleeps on the couch.  Sure, HE gets to sit on my couch!!
   I'm told the new sink and cooktop is going in this week and two more cabinets will be finished in a few days so I will be able to start moving things out of the living room.  Sofa, here I come!! 
   And on a really cool note, we figured granite on our kitchen island was not going to be an option because of the price.  BUT!!! We saw an article in our little local paper talking about this family owned business (Chippewa Stone in Medina, Ohio - and they are AWESOME!!) that sells granite and loves helping people achieve their decorating and remodeling goals.  So, we decided to go check em out and these folks couldn't have been nicer.  We walked in and my first words were, "Hi, we would like granite for our kitchen, but we're poor."  And instead of them tossing us out on our ears, they took us through their warehouse and we looked at probably 200 huge pieces of granite. 
   When I reiterated that money was a big issue, she helped us find a remnant piece that is a perfect match for what we want.  So on a whim, I asked her to price it for us, not holding my breath since all the other places quoted between $1400.00 and $1800.00 which is NOT in our budget range.  Well, it ended up being less than half of what we expected.  And, they would even install it! Not even sex has ever excited me this much!!  (Ok, that's an over-statement)
  

"I'm living in swiss cheese with a door"....

So, about 15 years ago, Bob and I started talking about remodeling our house.  It's a 60 year-old farm house that is probably the worst floor-plan ever designed.  No, scratch that.  It IS the worst floor-plan ever designed.  I'm not exaggerating.  I don't even have a front door.  (Pause to let that fact sink in)  I have a door off the screened-in side porch that goes directly into the kitchen.  THAT's my front door. 
   The kitchen is a room with no wall space.  One wall has the stairs to the upstairs; one wall has a big opening into the livingroom; one wall has a door to the basement; and one wall had a tiny (and our only) bathroom.  By tiny, I mean 3x5.  (Pause again so you can get a mental picture)  This is what we had been living with for years. 
   We talked and talked about how to change this place into a liveable environment and Bob is a handy man extraordinaire, so much so that our friends say there should be a reality show called, "You're not Bob" because if he was on survivor, he'd have solar heat and running water in the first 24 hours.  People would get voted off because, well, "You're not Bob".
   But then he got the big C.  Yep, Non-hodgkins Lymphoma.  (That ongoing ordeal, I'll save for other posts)  For now, suffice to say this nasty cancer has been coming back about every two years, each time requiring another 6 month long round of treatment and laying my hubby flat for several months.
   So here we are, 15 years and 9 rounds of chemotherapy later and my energizer bunny is still going.  Albeit slower and not quite as strong, but still going.  Thank goodness.  But naturally, this stalled the remodeling job....Big Time! 
   The other roadblock was and still is money.  Once we decided what needed to be done, it occurred to us that we couldn't afford it.  At least  not all at once.  So I got the brilliant idea (yes, I'm being facetious) to do it as time and health allowed.  A little at a time.  "Piece-meal it." I said.  How bad could that be?  In hindsight, hahahahahahahahahahaha.
   So the project began two years ago and to date, the only place I have to sit down (literally) is my side of the bed or in the bathtub.  I watch TV in bed, I eat my meals in bed, I read my mail in bed, and now that the weather is changing toward winter, I won't even have my patio as an escape.  What was only supposed to be a minor re-do of the kitchen has exploded into a re-do of the entire house.  Granted, the entire house is basically only 4 rooms on the first floor but when all four rooms are non-functional, it's beyond description.   In order to make the kitchen bigger, we had to remove the bathroom.  In order to create a new bathroom, we had to remove a walk-in closet and move a wall which made the bedroom smaller which meant we had to get rid of our king-sized bed.  In order to work on the kitchen, everything in the kitchen had to be moved into the living room.  I will post some pictures soon.  You have to see it to believe it.  Whenever one of us trips over a tool or stubs their toe on a pile of wood, we repeat our mantra.....IT'S GONNA BE GREAT!
   I'm being told the project will be done by Christmas, but I'm not holding my breath.  I'm barely holding on to my sanity!