Day 42

(April 30, 2020)
It feels like all around us, the 'energy' behind this thing is waning. Precautions aren't really letting up, I guess it's mostly just becoming more normal to use hand sanitizer all the time and do your best to not touch all the things and wash my hands more thoroughly. My anxiety surrounding it, however, is amping up slightly. It just hit me the other day what me getting this virus would mean: As a single Mom whose kids attend day programs while I work full time, not only would I have to self-quarantine for 14 days, my kids would as well. Let that sink in.

I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, but as cases amp up in our county (and explode rapidly just 30 miles south of us in Nobles county), I'm certainly not in a space of calm. I'm making a conscious choice to trust God at this point, but I could certainly let go of it all more. While I really do trust that God has good in store for me and us at some point, I wouldn't put it past him to allow this exact scenario to play out, considering things just seem to keep piling on. I guess you can say I've become pretty jaded, and expectant of all the forms of suffering. "Count it all joy", right? Ooofda!

I don't know that I'm ready for things to go back to normal, though. Much like the trauma I've been through with Mark, I feel like it takes me a while to be ready to step back and really absorb what happened before I carefully step back forward. Kendrick is like that too: Extremely observant when he's not sure of himself.

I'm certainly not in the camp where this whole thing has allowed me to be calm and "slow down" and "enjoy life" like so many people suggest. For me, it's a total rat race, and I'm busier than I have ever been in my entire life. I've seen this little snippet running around Facebook a dozen times in the past week, and I feel like most of it doesn't pertain to me:

Bills are the same. Kids are still at childcare during the day. I don't get to be home with my kids. I've always made home cooked meals, my schedule is MORE hectic than it was, I get very, very few "breaks", I still have little kids, and therefore, nothing is more sanitary or hygienic around here, my house is MUCH louder than it had been, and aside from the part where I'm allergic to flowers in general, I certainly have zero time to stop and smell the roses. Perspective, I guess?

But...I'm also in the camp where I want my hubby to be safe where he's at, and to be honest, I don't have time to read a ton of biased articles and Facebook posts to make up my mind. So...we do our best to do what we can and comply to whatever requirements there are. I'm already used to kinda feeling like a caged animal since I have 4 kids and never get much time to do what I feel like doing or going where I want to go.

I'm back to that space where my physical body is sore from all the demands being placed on it, no longer just the good kind of sore that comes from exercise. (I miss you, Tauyna! Also, I am SO ready for a stinkin' massage!!!) Replacing our kitchen sink last night added so much soreness and exhaustion beyond the levels that I feel comfortable with. I'm looking forward to tonight being a night that I'm not up until 1am painting and repairing stuff.

There haven't been a ton of changes as far as work is concerned. There are cases now, but there hasn't been any sort of large outbreak, and I feel safe where I'm at in the building. They just announced yesterday that basically, I'll be forced to buy another week of vacation. That's not how they put it, but that's kinda what it amounts to. (Pay decrease but an extra 5 holiday days). I can't say I'm upset about that, really. Other than that, the changes are pretty minimal as far as it is concerned there. People are cleaning the place constantly around here, and everyone is doing a pretty good job of keeping their social distance (for the most part). Lots of people wearing masks now.

And now...for the "what have I been up to since the last update" part, which is basically just a TON of house remodel stuff and fixing all the things (in case you feel like skipping it).

We've had some great progress on the entryway and lower level bathroom! I painted (first coat, anyway) on Tuesday night and moved the furniture back in on Wednesday over lunch. What a HUGE difference!!!

I'm waiting on the built ins that will go where the bench is now, but am absolutely SO thrilled to be able to put the baskets and such back up there. I am GIDDY about finally being able to migrate from hangers to hooks for jackets and coats and such, and all the cubbies for winter gear makes me so excited!


I ordered this fabric the other day that I will use to cover the bulletin boards that house the kids' school paperwork, and plan to start researching in the near future some sort of communication center. I'm half tempted to throw a small display TV up there so we can have scrolling announcements and reminders. I already have the gear for the setup, just haven't decided if that's really what I want to do just yet. I've still got to go and patch all the holes (I was too antsy to do it before the first coat - we've been in a construction zone for far too long already), so I've got to do that still, but it's coming. I'm excited to get some decor up there on the wall and dresser and really make it "home". I also ordered this beautiful little silk floral arrangement, since I am allergic to flowers, and I can't wait for it to get here!

The cube boards will go on that bare wall between the garage door and the built ins. After I get the garage door replaced (it's very drafty and old and dinged up pretty bad, which you can't see from the picture. Prior to me installing the drainage in the cement outside the door, we would constantly have water damage to the walls there. It has been fixed for a couple years now and I'm satisfied that it won't happen again, so it was time to finally tackle those walls and get this squared away! I was SO excited to get it all done!

Tile was delivered yesterday for the bathrooms, but now I've got to find someone to put it up (or do it myself, which is mildly terrifying to think about).

The garage is slowly getting more and more decluttered, which feels good! One big load for the curb or to the dump, and we'll be down to bikes, a wagon and the jet ski.

I feel like I'm spending much of my time just fixing newly broken things around the house. Like the hose reel, and as of just a few days ago, the kitchen faucet.

In the meanwhile, we've spent a lot of time outside lately. Between the big kids riding their bikes, running up and down the sidewalk with the little ones, swinging and using our new basketball hoop to shoot some bball, it's just a lot.

I'm very much ready for all our little renovations to be finished and take a hiatus for a while so that we can get back to our "normal" for a while. I'm not really ready for "phase 2" of anything, and I'm not sure that's going to take priority for an extremely long time. Honestly, probably not until after Mark is gone. Living through renovations is so, so exhausting and takes such a long time. I'm ready to come home at the end of the day and not have things to research online and order and line up a contractor and have a list of people to call and feel like I'm constantly behind the ball with all the things.

Basically, I'm really learning that I need to rest a LOT more, and let the dust settle. Literally and figuratively: There's drywall dust everywhere. oO(Melanie - I am SO ready for you tomorrow!! haha)

And now...It's a little after 10pm, and I think I'm going to go crawl in bed. Because I CAN. Because the things are mostly done!

Kitchen Renovation

We've just begun doing a fairly significant renovation in our kitchen, including (but not limited to) new flooring, a new sliding glass door, a new tile back-splash and upgrading our previous blinds with curtains.

Our current kitchen is much beloved, but it has certainly seen WAY better days. We're giddy for the changes ahead, although nervous that we're making the right decisions.

Sliding Glass Door

The door was beginning to actually rot out at the bottom (as are some of our windows, which is a project we foresee needing to address in the near future as well), so that was the first thing to be changed out. We hired this done, as the door was entirely too heavy for Mark to lift alone, but considering I'm now entering into my second trimester, I'm not really much help without pulling muscles left and right. It turned out to be a great decision for us!

See before:

The door itself was very dated, but the worst part was how it was rotting along the bottom from getting so much moisture in from a bad seal:

After:
The new door doesn't solve the awful flooring issue, but it does look significantly better! Still waiting for the window treatments (which I'll get to next).

Window Treatments

Of course, the natural progression with the door being replaced was to decide what to do with the blinds. I've never hated them, but they do irritate me on the level that both of our kids just love to play with them and I'm just waiting for the day when they come crashing down as a result. That, and they add NO color or warmth to the room. They also ended up cutting the doors down to about 2/3 the size they really are, since they all bunch up on one side. We decided on curtains with a rod that extends about 6 inches past on either side of the window so that we could truly open things up and let a lot more light in.

When I went to pick out the curtains, a lot came into play, but a lot of that had to do with the tile backsplash we had picked out back at the beginning of July. We LOVED the backsplash and thought it'd be great to tie in some of the colors from that across the room at the window. So here's what we went with:


Product link on Menards.com

We decided to match up the darker blue color in the tile for the curtains, so we went with these from JCP

Curtains at JCPenney

Curtain rod at JCPenney

Flooring

Flooring for the kitchen has been quite the headache, truthfully. We always kind of were leaning towards hardwood or engineered hardwood, but really started struggling with that decision when we thought about trying to match up the different colors of wood in our house: From blonde cabinets to medium-grain stairs and a different color medium-grain trim throughout the house. We initially decided to go with DuraCeramic tiles, a tile composite type product that looked really great when we ordered it (and the salesman also just raved about).

However, once we went back to pick up our order, the company had discontinued the product, which gave us pause. We should have looked up the reviews before placing the order, because had we done so, we would have realized that it had HORRIBLE reviews. We took it back a couple weeks later and choked down the 25% restock fee. We figured we'd rather be out a couple hundred dollars in stupid tax than to go to all the trouble of putting back down flooring that we weren't satisfied with.

We went back to the drawing board, and I picked up a few samples when I was in Mankato with my friend Angie once again, except this time we had a PERFECT fit! We found this flooring and it complements all the other wood in our house PERFECTLY, which is hard to envision. Not only does it go with the cabinets, trim and stairs, but it also complements our wood dining room furniture that we've got for the time being until our kids stop ruining things. (haha- will that be "ever"??)

Link to the hardwood flooring from Menards.com
In this particular picture, it looks a little more wild than in real life, but this room also appears to have significantly more light than our living room gets, and we also intend to tone it down a bit with an area rug in the TBD future.

We're really excited to get the ball rolling on the flooring, as our current flooring (linoleum and a lighter colored berber carpet) is 18 years old, stained, and very (very, very) disgusting. See exhibits A and B:


Okay, that above picture doesn't do the condition justice, as it's not a high-traffic area like the one below:

Other projects that we may possibly tackle down the road would be cabinets and counter tops, but quite frankly, we're just trying to tackle the necessities at the current time. The more urgent needs after these initial changes will be replacing more windows in the house, as many of them are starting to rot out.

Oh, the joys of home ownership :)

Stay tuned for an update in a few weeks!