How IKEA Made Mama Cry

Oh IKEA. I love you. I hate you. I love you. Maybe. This particular tumultuous episode in our relationship occurred on Sunday, bright and early. We left home with our big trailer...with hopes of filling it up with our entire kitchen contents...and toting it back up the mountain. We had been on the IKEA website, using the 3D kitchen planning tool...and thought we had everything roughly sketched and figured out. 

We walked through all of those adorable little apartment kitchens, opening and closing doors and drawers...anticipation growing in our hearts as we approached the planning cubicles. And then, as I was taking it all in, it hit me. The white cabinets IKEA offers didn't match the white paint that we had already spent a week applying. Why oh why?! At the time of painting, we didn't know if we were going with IKEA or not. Hence the difference. There is nothing I dislike more than mismatched whites. But we weren't about to re-paint everything. And so, we had quite the dilemma. We considered going to grey cabinets, but my heart has been set on white for-EVAH. 

As Matt and I sat at the planning table discussing our options...the girls were becoming increasingly vocal and "borrrrrrrrred". Two of them tried to go shopping on their own without letting us know. We were noticeably more rambunctious than the newlyweds next door planning their first kitchen with stars in their eyes.  I finally decided to just let Matt do the planning and I took the girls to play in the kid's section.

Matt continued to work his magic with the layout and we found some small tents and moose to commandeer...firmly in the middle of Sunday shopping chaos. After about an hour, we headed back and found Daddy finishing up. 

It was decision time. *gah* We decided to wait. We just didn't know what we wanted to do with the color of the cabinets and the kitchen in general. Nor did we have one ounce of energy left to navigate the Marketplace for the other items on our list. It was a big list. Lighting, frames, rugs, art room shelving, and more. But we walked out the door.

We left IKEA with nothing. 

Not one thing. Matt loaded the kids into the truck and I sat down on the curb. The sunshine warmed my face as big tears of disappointment rolled down and sat on my cheeks. I felt defeated. By IKEA. By my children. By kitchen cabinets. Our kitchen quest, and our remodeling adventure in general felt like it was going backwards, not forwards. The decisions just kept piling up and up and up. It was like that moment on HGTV when the weary mama is filming a selfie video as she hides in the closet...crying that this is just "too hard" and she can't go on. The mama I always shake my fist at and say..."Suck it up girl! you're getting a new kitchen! Geez!". And now I am that mama. 

I finally got up and we went on our way. Matt and I sat in silence for a long time...and I continued to cry. When he finally spoke, he said,

"I know it's hard for you when things don't go the way you planned.
We're going to make this work honey. One way or another. It will be great."

This man knows me deeply. He was so gentle in his approach, even though this little hiccup wasn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. It was just the straw that broke the camel's, or in this case, the mama's back. It had been a very long emotional week already. 

From that moment, things improved. Light started to shine in the cracks and we talked about all the options we hadn't thought of yet. We were all laughing by the time we pulled back into Boulder.  It was a gorgeous, warm day. We stopped for some iced coffee at Ozo and headed over for a little salvage hunting at ReSource. 

We have decided to change the color of our great room just a tad so that the white kitchen pops a bit more and the whites don't clash.

I'll be sharing about those paint choices later this week. I am notoriously quick and efficient with choosing colors and it's rare that we have to re-paint. This time...it's OUR home. And apparently that makes it harder than painting a rental. Much harder. Especially because I'm doing things a bit more muted this time around. I have to figure everything out from scratch. We have painted several rooms already and we are now re-painting all of them.

Matt just keeps smiling as he picks up the roller again and again. I now know why people say a house remodel can be one of the most stressful things you can take on. But tonight we had our first fire in the fireplace. Our home is warm. We are together...and all is well. 

Barnwood Beams and Bathrooms

The word "weekend" used to mean something a little different before we moved to our new house. Leisurely coffee sipping, HGTV, rest, and not too many plans. Oh how things have changed! Our weekends are now filled with visits to Home Depot, dust, demolition, and dangerously high levels of sugar and caffeine. ;-)

On Friday afternoon, Matt surprised me by finishing the barnwood beam in the living area! I LOVE it! He eventually also moved the scaffolding and all the demo trash outside the window...so now we have our unobstructed views back again. Open space. Windows. Yum.

On Saturday morning did have a few quiet moments, but then got busy prepping for the plumber to arrive. He was coming up to re-route the gas line to the kitchen. Cuz this girl doesn't do electric cooktops. No thank you...turn that flame up! 

Unfortunately, he had to reschedule. So instead, we got a wild hair and decided to rip up carpet and tear down a wall. It gets addicting you know.

Our master bedroom only has a tiny toilet/sink room attached. But we really want to have our own shower. The adjacent art room and office just happens to have a huge closet that is the perfect size for a shower...separated only by one wall. So we knocked that baby right down! Weeeee! 

We weren't planning on doing it until later, but hey...might as well make a big mess of your house all at once. And I quite like watching my handsome hubby flex his muscles. Hubba hubba ;-)

While we were at it, we decided to rip up the carpet in the other bathroom. Yes, carpet in the bathroom. It hurts me to even write that nonsense.

We will eventually be moving the bathtub to the window wall, bumping the toilet over, and doing a complete facelift on this bathroom. But for now, we'll be focusing on my little hideaway spa!  

I'm envisioning lots of white and silver/grey in here. Pretty tile. A vintage dresser for the vanity and a big framed mirror. *sigh* Oh bathroom dreams. But for now, we have a little more elbow room while using the toilet.

Stay tuned...tomorrow I'll share about our Sunday trip to IKEA and our kitchen plans!

Life in the Waiting

This house is the biggest renovation project we've ever attempted as a family. I think of our apartment in Bozeman and all the work we did there. And of our most extensive RV remodel, The Minnie Winnie. Those were a lot of hard work, despite their tiny size. 

Even with those, we powered through them in a week or two. An entire house? Now that's a different story! We are pluggin' away day by day...there so much to process and plan and decide. 

For the past twenty years our house was a rental...the owner LOVED this place and took care of it from afar, but it was in need of major TLC and updating. I knew the moment we stepped in the door for the first time that we would be the ones to make it shine. 

Knocking down walls, closing doorways, adding gas lines, moving electric lines...it all takes time time time. I am beyond thankful that Matt is so confident and skilled at everything that we need to accomplish. 

We are getting closer and the end is in sight...but we've had some tough days lately. It's not all happy flags and sunshine around here. We're a normal family with struggles and trials...just like everyone else.  It's certainly not easy living in 600 sq ft with 5 people and 2 dogs. But on the hard days, we are growing. We re-focus our energy and emotion to settle into a heart of gratitude. 

I've been fighting against those thoughts that we all have in "the waiting". That life will begin when such and such happens. When the house is all done...I can start doing this or that. And to some extent...it's true. A host of options will open up for us after it's done. But I don't want to live in constant WAITING. And wanting. I want to live in the NOW. I know that is what Jesus wants for me as well. Life to the fullest!

I've been reading Shauna Niequiest's book, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life...and it speaks right to my heart during this time ( bolded my favorite part):

"...believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it. I don’t want to wait anymore.

I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting."

All kinds of goodness in that book. And her other books. Check them out!  

And so...I start this day with fresh perspective on life and "the waiting". I will see every moment as sacred, even in the hardest moments where life feels like it's spinning around me, because they are part of my story too. 

Are you in a time of waiting?
What truth have you discovered? 

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