coming undone and then being done

Today was a pretty monumental day. I finished a project that I'd started so long ago that I'm not exactly sure when I started it. I want to say it was around 3 years ago, but it might have been four. So what's this project you're probably thinking or for fuck's sake Sarah got on with it already or this post will take just as long, it was refacing my kitchen cabinets.

I hated the kitchen cabinets when we bought the house but at that time I was a little pregnant and I had a two year old so cabinets weren't even on my 'to think about' list. So there they were these brown cabinets, mocking me night and day, saying things like "We're so 80's it hurts" and "People are talking about your cabinets and they're saying, OUTMODED". Seriously, they talked.

So I didn't know nothing about refacing cabinets but I knew I could no longer live with those cabinet doors so I took them off (around Fall 2007). Well actually, I took off the top cabinet doors. I decided that if I got some paint and painted them and used some new hardware all would be well in the land of my kitchen and the voices would stop. I'd painted the house about two years prior and that'd gone moderately well. Luckily Don was not shocked when he came home and found the doors off. Actually he'd used that as a threat more often than not when I failed to close a cabinet. I bought some paint and we were ready to go. Problem was that once I put the pain on the cabinets, I hated the color. It was way more purple than I'd thought it would be. And that my friends is where the project screeched to halt. Yup three door painted a hideous color and then nothing. We all got used to living without the cabinets and actually kind of liked that look better but it was the ever lingering project.

So linger, linger, linger it did. It mocked me every so often, but that was to be expected. But today, today I finished that project. I put the hardware on the last cabinet door and hung it up, and now my friends the kitchen has refinished cabinets. The need to rent your house is quite the motivator for finishing a long ago started project.

It's great to finish project especially one you had no clue how to do in the first place. I learned a lot along the way and made enough mistakes and had enough missteps to rival anyone. But I stuck with it and in many ways I went with my intuition.

The finishing of the cabinets is the perfect cap to weeks and weeks of painting the house. The whole place just looks nice and clean and refreshing. What a difference sanding, a few coats of paint and polyurethane can make. Makes me want to move back in. But then I'd bring all of my junk and dirt and chaos.

AND YES, WE'RE GOING TO CHANGE THE COUNTERTOP TOO. Donations accepted.