Never in my wildest dreams did I think my life would be on the path it has been on for the past several months. I am overjoyed with the ability to trust in knowing that God's plans are so much grander than I could ever envision.
Closing has come and gone and we finally have a move-in date. After many discussions with our contractor, we have agreed that the weekend of October we can get our furniture and possessions into the garage and actually be able to unpack and arrange the first weekend of November. Happy Birthday Ema! You get your own room back!!
Since we closed, we have spent both weekends at the property. The first one we spent changing locks, painting a coat of kilz all over the walls to get rid of the odor and removing wallpaper from the entrance. It really worked wonders.
That is until our contractor and his crew came in an demo'd the joint the during the week. When we purchased the place, we knew that everything but the drywall and the kitchen cabinets would be removed. The place had seen better days and we wanted to make sure everything was up to parr.
Upon removing the countertops a new odor was detected...
There in lies my dilemna. When the first cupboard was removed and I saw a trail of mouse droppings along with the original flooring from the when the house was built--only covered in a layer of grease and grime, I must admit that I had a moment of sheer panic. Ugh...what have we gotten ourselves into? I froze. My loving Mann continued to scrub and clean and remove cabinets, but I froze. Complaining the whole time. Pleading with him to find the 14 grand our contractor quoted us to remove and replace the cabinetry. It didn't work. I knew that was a ridiculous amount, but I couldn't imagine ever cooking in this room. I was having difficulty moving beyond what I was seeing. But I had to get over it.
So, I joined in and started scrubbing as well. That is until we got to that infamous Lazy Susan. Who knew. What a crazy, disgusting shock we found. After removing this cabinet from the wall we looked down and saw a 3 foot square 2 inches deep of insulation, drywall and paper shreds. It was a mouse mansion. I can't even describe how utterly grossed out I became. How could this be? How could my new home have an infestation of little brown and gray rodents no bigger than my key ring. Yuck! I can't even imagine how many mice lived in this section of our kitchen. Of course this was my breaking point. I was done. No longer could I contain my ability to be calm and try to imagine these cabinets painted, with new knobs and new counters. I just couldn't do it. But my Mann was not giving up. He pressed on. He took out the remaining cabinets and continued to sweep and clean. Gotta love him!
Upon driving home that afternoon, we decided to stop by the home depot to pick up some mice poison and ammonia to prevent future mice and rid the kitchen of the smell forever. I was dreaming of that home baked chocolate chip cookie smell by the way!
When we walked into the home depot I noticed that their in stock cabinets were 20% off this weekend. WHAT?!! Could it be? Could we possibly be able to make this work out? After a few calls to the contractor, a call to our brother-in-law to see if we could borrow his truck and a couple of hours mapping out if the new cabinets would be easy enough to install, we made the decision to go new! Yeah!! I was doing the happy dance! The best part was that in only cost $3500 to replace them. Our ideas for refinishing we going to easily exceed $4000.
All I can say is God knows me so well. (Why do I even act surprised at this? He knew me long before I even arrived for this journey.) He knows I am a clean freak and that having new cabinetry would ease my mind. For this all I can say is THANK YOU LORD!
So, I am sure you are wondering how they turned out...well....for that you will have to come back because right now I gotta boogie to the doctor. I am getting my hearing checked because I failed the test at school last month.
Oh the drama!!!!
