This is what my kitchen used to look like.....

Yes. That is it. It is the original 1946 kitchen. No dishwasher. Only about 3 feet of usable counter space - if you put the dish drainer under the sink.

Erin, over at The State That I Am In, has issued a cleaning up the house challenge. We are to write about our feelings about cleaning. And boy, do I have some feelings!

We are currently in the final stages of a kitchen remodel. It has been a wile ride! My house has been a disaster since the middle of May. Here is the story, in pictures, and you can see all the mess I've had to try to stay on top of.

Mid-May: Purchasing Cabinets. They had to go somewhere: in my dining room! My dining table got moved into the entry/living room because you can see cabinets stacked clear up to the pendant fixture in the dining room. OMG! And there were 2 huge base corner cabinets in the garage that we couldn't even get in the house (since I couldn't lift them.) Seriously, you may be thinking, "Aww! What is the big deal? So you eat in the living room." Yes, a living room full of furniture that I now have to navigate around when cleaning or serving food. And it is doubly far from the kitchen!


Early June: Demolition

This actually went ok on the uppers. They were only held on by a few screws and a bracket. No big mess to take them down and put up the new uppers. But the base cabinets... oh, there was a huge surprise waiting on me down there.


Base cabinets were fairly simple to remove. But when we pulled out the sink base (a huge 5 foot monster!)


we found this...


There are simply not words to describe what I felt when I saw this, the Hilton-Marriot-Waldorff-Astoria of mouse houses! After DH checked it for remains, I got the task of scooping it into the trash - and sucking the rest into the vacuum cleaner.

I hate remodeling. I hate cleaning. I hate being away from home because I have no usable kitchen. I hate coming home from 10 days away to a nasty, black, mildewed toilet and bathtub. While waiting on the counter-top installers to come on Tuesday, I get to clean the bathroom. Joy. But at least they clean the kitchen when they leave. :)

So, now you know more about me. And how I have been CRAZY for the last 6 weeks - can't clean when stuff is all over the house. At least on Wednesday, I'll get to put my kitchen together and restore my house to its former, pre-renovation, minorly cluttered state. What bliss!