Absolute MADness!

I'm stealing a phrase from my sister when I say that I'm officially 'hijacking' Brooke's site to vent... So... GRRR!!!

For those of you who know me well, you know that any kind of mess - anywhere near me - could send me over the edge! I'm a neat freak...not necessarily a 'clean freak' but a 'everything needs to be organized and in it's place-freak!' Maybe that comes with the territory of being a sixth grade teacher - order is a must! So now that my house is COMPLETELY turned upside down and EVERYTHING is out of order, I feel like someone is trying to push me over the edge!

It's quite funny, actually... and I'm doing much better than I would have thought, but JEEZ! I just want my organized house back!

Honestly, I can't believe that Zig and I have even made it this far with the kitchen remodel!

We've been wanting to start this project since the day we signed on our very first home - Don't get me wrong, the existing kitchen is in wonderful shape! The cabinets were beautiful, the flooring was relatively new, but the counter tops had 30 years of grime while the appliances were still the 1970 original! Yikes... Notice the before...

And the after...
I know that it could be a lot worse, but talk about hiding things behind closed doors! No such thing at my house!

The wonderful woman who is restoring our cabinets is a dear friend of mine. As I said in an earlier post, she is the owner of my favorite country store around here and has agreed to take on our large kitchen task!

She came to get all of the doors and drawers last week and she is probably painting and staining them as we speak!

She'll be here bright and early on Wednesday morning to refinish all of the existing woodwork... I honestly can't wait to see what everything looks like!

In the mean time, Zig and I have been working quickly to prepare for what will happen after the cabinets are finished!

John was here with us yesterday and helped remove all of the old appliances... Yep - that means I have no means of cooking for a few weeks! Thank goodness for Crock Pots, toasters and microwaves! Otherwise, I'd be living on Subway and McDonald's for 3 weeks - and that would be awful!

We also had a custom cabinet made to make better use of our kitchen space. This whole thing was Zig's idea and I have to say that I like it more than I thought I would... The following is a picture of the new cabinet sitting almost in place. We removed a small desk area underneath the existing cabinets where I used to keep my microwave and all of Brooke's bottles. Now, we'll have a large cabinet with a big drawer, microwave built-in, a storage nook and 2 doors hiding storage shelves underneath! Cool!

There is still so much to do! I swear, we've had a Lowe's 'to-d0' list running for weeks!

We've picked out a beautiful shade of red for the walls - we think it will be perfect with our steeple-white cabinets, black counter tops and back splash, black appliances and tan flooring!

So - painting, laying tile, packing up, unpacking stuff, moving things from one room to another...I've about lost my mind - but I have to remind myself of the end result - and I can't wait to post pictures of our FINISHED and BRAND SPANKIN' NEW KITCHEN on my blog!

Stay tuned!