Construction and Destruction

Yesterday was both a construction and destruction day at our Lutheridge house.  If I let myself think about the pace of house reconstruction on a daily basis, I feel like we're making progress.  If I think about what is still left to do, I'm overwhelmed.  If I think about what we've accomplished, particularly in this time of global supply chain issues and construction workers/home repair people having more to do than they have time and crews to do it, I feel like we've made amazing progress:  a new HVAC system that works much better than our old system of baseboard heat and no AC, new windows and sliding glass doors (and some wood rot issues treated), a new front door where there wasn't one before, a different way to access the loft which meant we could get rid of the staircase which took up a lot of the common area.

If you look at our house from the outside, you might think it was done:

The window install that happened back in April was incomplete because one window wasn't on the truck.  It arrived a week later, but it was a 3 week wait for the install to happen.  

Oh well, what's another month when doing home renovations?  At least here we can do renovations and be relatively sure that we won't have a hurricane destroy all our work.  Perhaps a falling pine tree, but the risk of that happening is less than a hurricane.  Our old house now has a 100% chance of a flooding event that breaches the inside of the house.  And of course, the hurricane risk is constant.  Our new house doesn't have those risks.

Here's how our kitchen looked at the end of the day yesterday:

For the sake of comparison, here's how it looked 10 months ago when we moved in:

Some people have looked at the picture and commented on the cuteness of it.  And in a way, it was cute, but some of the cabinets didn't have much usable space--we've learned a lot about accommodating corners in the decades since those cabinets were constructed. 

Those cabinets were constructed for that space and the stain that was used for them no longer exists, so keeping them and having a functional kitchen wasn't really an option.  

The new cabinets are supposed to arrive a week from today, and we're supposed to let the sit in the house for 2 weeks before we install them.  We have paid to have them installed, so fingers crossed that the installing team won't wait 4 more weeks (or more) to get that done.  

It is strange to be in this lull--I only have 2-3 weeks a year when I'm not taking classes and not teaching classes.  This week is one of those weeks.  I keep feeling like I've forgotten to do something.  But my grades are turned in, my course work done, and I will try to enjoy this lull.