It's always darkest right before the dawn?

Taking a night off and going to the movie really helped my psyche. I'm back at it today with none of the pressing weight of yesterday. I'm alive and kickin', and I'll do the best I can as quick as I can and be thrilled with the result.

It also really helped that when I got back home the tile grout was completed (good man, B!) so today I've been able to move back into my kitchen a bit.

Would love to do a picture post to let you all see what I'm doing, but I really should take time out for uploading and constructing. Not this morning. So I'll just store up the pics and let you see 'em all next week when it's complete. But for now: tile done! *ticks checkmark*

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Now playing: U2 - No Line On the Horizon
via FoxyTunes

Getting desperate

I know I'm only a week and half in on this kitchen project and I should have more stamina than this, but booooooooy am I getting tired of living in the disarray. And booooooooy am I tired, period. B gets home from work about 7:30 and then we start our big project of the night, wrapping up around 11:00, midnight, or even 1:00 and dragging our butts into bed. Then Macklin, who has a timer on his wee bladder, comes into my room at about 5:00 a.m. needing to go potty (which is a two-person task at that time of morning, and I'm the second person) and about half the time I can't get back to sleep for thinking of all I need to do. The other half of the time I get back to sleep, only to be reawakened with the alarm at 6:00 when Blaine gets up, and I go make him breakfast and lunch and then start my working day with the little tasks that don't require his strength or expertise.

So I'm simultaneously physically working all day long on things like painting (which requires me to clean up all the equipment completely when I stop, even if I've painted as little as 20-30 minutes), sanding, scrubbing surfaces to prepare them for paint, etc. And I'm juggling seven children, some of whom can help me, some of whom create more problems than they solve. And I have to stop three times a day whatever my momentum might be to make meals. And I have to try to keep a torn-apart kitchen tidy enough (!) to cook in and eat in, despite it being Project Central.

Now I have this pressure from my mortgage company. My appraisal didn't come in as high as we wanted it to, so we're going with a different loan—an FHA, which requires additional things evaluated. So the appraiser has to come back and check things like whether the furnace works, whether we have adequate water pressure, whether there are cracks in the foundation. Somehow, for some reason I'm not understanding at present, my kitchen being torn apart and in an unfinished state will affect whether or not I get this loan, despite the fact that he's already appraised the house and he's not doing a full reevaluation and there's no way the value will go up even if I've improved things in the last two weeks. If they're not going to give me extra points, why will they dock me?

So even though I'm working constantly on this and burning out, I now have to push even harder to get done before the second appraisal or whatever we want to call it. And I have to solve all sorts of little problems, holes or missing trim or a light fixture we've partially removed—things we've already begun because hey, it's our house—because now the cosmetic things matter to our funding.

And it's dinner time, so I'm stopping again.

But I'm taking tonight off to go to the drive-in with Emma and Christian and see Star Trek. They've worked hard too, and they deserve a little reward.

I just hope I can stay awake through it! *yawn*

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Now playing: Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick
via FoxyTunes

Waste of time and money

Rented a paint sprayer this morning: $45

Time spent spraying cupboard doors: 20 minutes

Time spent cleaning off the paint sprayer afterward: 2+ hours
(and it still probably isn't clean enough, they'll charge me additional when I turn it it as a cleaning fee)

One gallon of paint used: $36

Number of cupboard doors sprayed: 39

Number that worked: 9

Number that I had to scrape off and will have to paint again, this time with roller or brush: 30

Sigh.

I so could have used that time/money for other things today.

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Now playing: The Who - Behind Blue Eyes
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In memory of my old kitchen

Had a great Memorial Day weekend.

Side note: thank you, everyone past and present serving in the armed forces who have fought for my beloved nation, and preserved my liberty!

We've begun a kitchen facelift. So far we've

• taken all the cupboard doors off, B's used his router to give them a new face, and I've cleaned them w/ trisodium phosphate.
• installed additional shelves in my pantry cupboard, doubling my capacity there.
• taken the laminate backsplash off the wall, which also pulled off lots of the wallboard paper.
• put the first layer of "mud" on top of the nude wallboard to make it look like a wall again, coat 2 coming tonight.
• purchased tile so we can make a new backsplash of cuteness and toast counter of cuteness.
• patched all the nail holes and dings in the walls.
• purchased the primer and paint and rollers/brushes to paint—yes, paint—the cupboards.
• torn out the coved carpet so I can paint walls.
• figured out what we'll be doing for baseboard, door trim.
• purchased beadboard to install as an accent around the kitchen.

We're doing all the painting first, and then when our home refi goes through the first project we'll do is de-carpet the floor. And the kitchen will look gloriously like new! For about $600, instead of $20,000. At least, that's the plan.

Pics to follow. I'm taking plenty of them, but I'll do befores and afters all in one post. Off to keep prepping and start painting! Oh, and make meals for my kiddles.

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Now playing: Muse - Hyper Chondriac Music
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The difference a year makes!

Last year I was so anguished over whether or not to send Emma to the academy down the road for her high school education. Little journey recap: Homeschool, opportunities, universities, and life.

Today is the last day of her freshman year. I can't believe how time has flown! The decision turned out to be the best thing, the absolute best thing, we could have done for Emma. Times one thousand. She has thrived. She has blossomed! I can't wait to see what the next three years hold for her.

Here's just a little bit of what she did this year, in addition to maintaining a perfect 4.33 GPA for the first three quarters:

October Freshman Student of the Month


Magna Cum Laude on the National Latin Examination

The last two weeks there have been awards dinners. Usually parents don't attend these (parents being, for the most part, far away in another state or country) but when Emma texted me to say they were giving out academic awards and she'd be late that evening, I hustled my butt over to the school. I'm glad I did. She received these, and proudly wears the accompanying pins on her locker key lanyard. :)





This week on Monday there was a formal dinner (where the students actually have to dress up) and more awards. She told me it was only sports so I didn't go to this one. Therefore I missed watching her receive

the High Effort scholarship ($1000 toward next year's tuition) and

the Headmasters Scholarship ($2000 toward next year's tuition).

So proud of her. She has worked so hard.


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Now playing: David Cook - Little Sparrow
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