The past couple of weeks didn’t go quite how I had them planned. In my oh so logical way, I sat down and made myself a schedule of everything I wanted to get done for Christmas, and I have accomplished exactly nothing.
This year we’re hosting a couple of Christmas parties at our place, and the kid is only getting bigger, so I felt like I absolutely had to finish off the last of the big home improvement projects before then. We’ve painted every public area of the house except for the downstairs bathroom, and I really needed to refinish the icky cabinets. A weird peach glaze just did not work with the rest of the house. Of course, the downstairs bathroom was also wallpapered in a faux leopard print paper, so that had to come down too.
I had planned everything out so that I could get these projects done before December 1st, so that we could clean the mess up, put out the decorations, and get to enjoying our month of Christmas. Boy was that naive. We got delayed a couple weekends in a row because of family stuff, then it turned out the paint guy gave us the wrong color of paint (which I didn’t realize until I had already finished the first coat and thought, “Why would I have ever picked a color so pink?”).
I’d been sanding these dang cabinets for two weeks, and the day before Thanksgiving I finally unloaded my dishes from them so I could paint the inside of the cabinets that are glass fronted. I put all my crystal and serving dishes and wedding china on my dining room table and went to bed while I let the paint dry overnight. We woke up in the morning to the loudest crash ever as the table split in half and all the dishes crashed to the floor. Our dining table was an antique, and the screws holding one of the halves to the brace just popped out. We now have our everyday dishes that were (thankfully!) in the dishwasher at the time, two serving bowls, and three place settings of china. If you come over to my house anytime soon, you might want to bring your own plates. And a table if you’ve got one.
I was actually pretty devastated. The dishes are just things, nobody got hurt, it shouldn’t matter that much, but I’m bummed because they’re my tools. I use them to nurture and fuss over and make a home. Plus, I don’t know when we’re going to be able to replace them. We have a mountain of kid stuff calling our names, a set of china just isn’t going to be in the budget for a while.
I’m trying my best to put it behind me, be grateful for what I have, and finish the rest of this stuff so I can spend two days in a row not covered in paint. Just think, the day might come when I don’t have paint in my hair. It almost seems to good to dream about.
The next step is to paint the cabinet doors. This is a really time consuming process because each side needs three coats of paint and it takes a long time to dry, plus a lot of space, so I’m doing it outside. I’d been paying attention to the news reports, and they said that it might rain last weekend. Instead, a huge deluge started in the middle of the night Friday morning, so all my cabinets, free of any moisture barrier thanks to my sanding work, got completely soaked. As soon as we woke up we yanked the doors inside and dried them off, but by then the damage was done. All the neatly mitered corners are now gaping open. It was right about here that I reached my limit and broke down into huge racking hormonally fueled sobs.
Have I made mistakes in this home improvement marathon? Absolutely. But nothing colossally stupid. I live in San Diego, for crying out loud, not Seattle. I think it’s rained maybe four times since I’ve lived here. Should I have put the dishes on the floor? Duh, I can see that now. But whose table SPLITS IN HALF? I’m a walking Murphy’s Law, and while ordinarily I would have a much better sense of humor about this, right now I am pregnant and grumpy and in no mood.
I filled the cabinet gaps with wood filler, and after a few coats of paint I think it will be OK. I’ll probably have to get a little creative when I hang them since none of them are square, but I don’t think it will be enough that anyone would notice. I just probably won’t be inviting any master carpenters over anytime soon.