Executive Decisions

Our handyman stopped by Saturday morning, to touch up some paint and hang our plate-holding, decorative whatzit back on the kitchen wall.  Then he said good-bye, which was sort of an emotional scene for us, considering how much of our money he was walking out with.  But he left us with what felt like a brand-new kitchen, albeit with the same cabinets, floor tiles, back splash, and counters:

I don't know whether or not I am ever going to let the kids use it, actually, it looks so pretty. Please note the wainscoting that is dressing up the 46-year-old cabinets.  Also, the $4.99 flowers that are sprucing up our 14-year-old IKEA table.

Still life with no counter (it's on order).

We like our old cabinets so much, in fact, that we installed MORE of them, ones that we had scavenged from neighbors' kitchen remodels over the years. See the new hardware on those cabinets, there to the left?  The discussion surrounding its selection made the Iran nuclear talks look like a peaceful chat over cups of tea.  I was pulling people in off the street to tell me which of the 3 cabinet handles we had temporarily affixed to the cabinets was the best one. To add to the confusion, Larry went out on Thursday night and bought 2 MORE handles, which he installed on 2 MORE cabinets, just to make the voting more interesting. I finally had to make an executive decision that the handyman (who DID pick out the right paint color, after all) and I were right, a decision made easier by the fact that Larry was at work and could not intervene.

He accepted defeat gracefully, I'll say that.

And, yes, MORE flowers.  Bunko is tomorrow night, and we like to have things pretty for our drunken dice-rolling brouhaha, okay?

Ah, the pleasures of concealment!

Oh, but, hey - what is that picture to the right?  Are those...DOORS? Doors that actually conceal the contents of my pantry, rather than displaying them for all the world to see?  Why, yes - yes, they are.  I love these doors with all my being.  No longer do I have to tidy up the entire pantry when people come over, lining up my vinegars and getting the spices to all face outward on the lazy susan.  I have endured 5 YEARS without doors on my pantry, 5 years of public humiliation and a constant sense of disarray.  It is a new dawn here in The More, The Messier household, the start of a golden age in which no one will have the flotsam and jetsam of baking supplies staring them in the face every time he/she goes to use the microwave.

I'm feeling a little weepy right now, to be honest; but they're good tears, tears of pride and relief that we are putting the doorless years behind us. I just want to thank all the people who have endured alongside us, patiently waiting for Larry and I to get our act together and figure out how to make our house look normal.  I apologize to my older children, who spent their formative years not knowing that pantry and closet doors aren't supposed to hang uselessly from their hinges or fall onto unsuspecting people's heads.  I can only hope that their upbringing will make my kids more compassionate toward others who are also not up to speed on home improvement, more understanding of other people's non-working light switches and slow-draining tubs.

Or maybe it will convince them to make sure they marry people who do not hail from home-improvement-deficient backgrounds, so as not to repeat the cycle for their own kids.  People who can maybe do minor home repairs for their aging in-laws, even.  One can dream, right?