Remodeling is FUN. We Can Knock This Out in a Day. Old Houses are Charming. Plumbing is a Breeze. #thingspeoplewhoknowbetterneversay

Before I say anything, let me affirm that, yes, I have seen this post, have read it, shared it, commented on it, agreed with it. As much as I am a sucker for appliances and cooking gadgets, I don't need bells and whistles for my kitchen.

But, when there's black mold...

which I have tried bleaching and painting over, to no avail, and a leaky sink

which didn't cause the mold, but which isn't helping to get rid of it, I think a minor makeover is in order.

I am also really really cheap, though, so even after getting a fairly reasonable quote from a very good woodworker in town, we decided to do it ourselves. Unfinished cabinets were 20% off at the store with the big orange sign, and a MUCH bigger sink was to be had for a clearance price that made it equal to the generic one I was looking at. Score!

Pretty brown - not pink - counter top! With a BACK SPLASH, not scratched-up rubber strips!

As opposed to the current 5", which makes washing large pots a challenge for a contortionist.

And, after much deliberating about dishwashers (I hate them, but I also hate spending all my time washing dishes), I found this:

for $20. Sold!

So, Saturday I pulled off doors and stripping, and Daddy yanked the sink.

That was the easy part. We couldn't find any screws holding the counter top on...that's because it was stapled, not screwed.

We had to cut it, then pry it off.

Doesn't that wall look pretty?!

I see Jesus! Oh, wait - never mind, it's Elvis. Carry on.

But, wait...that is, in fact, the wall...not the back of the cabinet. There IS no back of the cabinet.

Insert bad words here.

So, Daddy headed back down the hill for drywall (water resistant, this time!), while I stained and varnished the new cabinets.

Which have backs! And no mold!

The middle kids were napping, and Christopher was on Starfall, so I just put Shane in his walker to keep him out of trouble.

Yeah, you knew that was coming, didn't you?

Now, have I ever mentioned that we live half an hour away from any actual stores? And that it has been raining every day lately? So, Daddy was in a hurry to get the drywall and get home before it started raining, water resistant or not. So, we didn't have time to pull the old stuff first.

If we had, we might have realized we were also going to need insulation.

I didn't get a picture before we ripped it out, we just wanted to get it sealed in trash bags and out of the house.

At this point, it was raining pretty steadily, and it was time to figure out some sort of supper that didn't require too many dishes, so this is where we left it for the evening. The good news is, we got absolutely no moisture in the house from the rain, so the mold was not the result of anything currently leaking! We're guessing the culprit was a leaky window that we fixed when we moved in, and it has been slowly growing before coming through the wall.

Oh, but, all that rain? It has caused a problem I have not had to deal with since I left Ohio twenty years ago: fleas. Yes, while all this is going on with the kitchen, I was also scrubbing down dogs, then the bathroom, then myself, then the dog bedding, then all the people bedding, then all the rugs. Because, you know, I don't already do laundry nonstop. 

Some of that might have been overkill, but better safe than itchy. SO glad we don't have carpet anywhere!

Of course, Monday, everyone had to go back to work and school, so at dinner time, the kitchen still looked like this:

I am a fan of neither TV dinners nor TV as a babysitter, but sometimes a Mom's gotta do what a Mom's gotta do. How to Train Your Dragon TV dinners, 

She is breathing fire.

and the corresponding movie. None of them really sit through a whole movie, but it distracted them enough to get one cabinet, 

two cabinets,

and a counter in!

Notice the light progression through the window! The floor is not level, and the walls are not straight, so it was not as simple as just sliding everything in. By this time the bigger kids were in bed, but Shane was not about to sleep through the noise. He was used as a weight while Daddy screwed the counter in.

Vibrating!

And then got to check out the new sink. It is huge! I can't tell you how excited I am about that, and I don't care how old and boring that makes me sound.

Shane was excited, too.

Then Daddy went and put a dirty fork in it. 

I will pause for all the women to look over at their husbands and shake their heads, knowing he would probably do the exact same thing. And for all the men to scratch their heads and wonder what is wrong with that.

Actually, Daddy wasn't the first to get things dirty - in the short amount of time Shane was on the counter, he spit up all over it, then made a grab at one of those pineapples, which turned out to be much riper than I thought it was, and his hand went right through it. By the time we quit for the evening, my brand new counter was sticky, and smelled like pineapple-flavored alcohol.

Stay tuned to our exciting saga, to find out: will the sink ever actually become attached to the counter? Will the plumbing (which is of a size no longer made) be adapted to work? What fresh evils will the $20 dishwasher produce? And how on EARTH am I going to fit 3 cabinets and 4 drawers worth of 'stuff' into one cabinet and drawer???