Simply Stated- Blogs - Adventures in Chaos- Real Simple

Our kitchen renovation is drawing to a close, or at least I think it is. Suddenly everything is happening really fast (staining floors, countertops and appliances arriving, etc.) which feels sort of like a horse speeding up once the barn is in sight. I can’t say enough good things about our contractor Rick, and he and his team have made the entire experience tolerable: more like a cavity filling than a root canal.

Over the course of the renovation we’ve had to sign a few contracts and write about 3,000 checks. But there are a few items that didn’t appear on the contract, and I’ve been compiling them in my head over the last couple of months. In no particular order:

1. If you have a dumpster, it becomes the neighborhood dumpster. You will wake every morning to discover things in your dumpster — which is in your driveway — that you’ve never seen before: a car seat, an old radio, some green window shutters, the box from a window fan. No, these are not your things. You just have to accept it..

2. Every improvement means something else breaks. Upgrading the wiring means tearing up the walls. Removing the oil tank from your yard means blowing up the sprinkler system. Turning your dining room into a temporary kitchen means some child will drop a slice of pizza on the living room floor, cheese side down, and as far as you know there is just no way to get pizza grease out of a jute rug. Weeks and weeks later, you will still marvel at how the stain is exactly the size and shape of a piece of pizza.

3. Van drivers do not know how to back out of a driveway without running over the peonies (see the peonies, above). After this happens more than three times, the peonies probably really are dead.

4. If it’s 8 a.m. and you’re not dressed yet, that is not going to stop the electrician from walking up the stairs toward your bedroom.

5. If you have a mercury thermostat, once it’s half torn out of the wall and resting sideways, the mercury bubble (or whatever it is) will rise as high as it goes, which will mean the furnace thinks you have turned the thermostat all the way to 90. Even if it’s July and the outside temperature is 95. And yes, the furnace will keep pumping heat and no, going into your bedroom and turning the window AC unit on full-blast won’t really improve matters.

6. You and your husband will eventually stop glaring at each other, but it’s going to take a while.

7. Your kids will become addicted to Annie Chun’s teriyaki noodle bowl from Trader Joe’s and will eventually start complaining on the nights they have to eat “real” food that is cooked on the grill and not in the microwave.

8. If a man pounds hard enough on the wall of the kitchen, a 4” chunk of dining room wall will eventually fly off, possibly while you are standing at the temporary counter pouring yourself a bowl of cereal.

9. Electricians often don’t remember to turn every little circuit breaker back on before they leave for the day, which means you may not have a working alarm clock and you certainly can’t figure out how to turn off the alarm on your husband’s running watch.

10. You will stop caring that your house is in shambles, that you can’t find the coffee grinder, that there are muddy dog prints on the family room rug, that there is plaster dust on your clothes, that both cordless phones seem to be missing most of the time, and that your kids have eaten no vegetables besides sliced peppers and organic baby carrots for three months. You will be very glad that the project finally ends, because if it went on much longer your level of not caring would reach a point that you would stop washing your hair or maybe even showering altogether.

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