I think it is safe to say that many of us had some major life changes in spring of 2020. If you were anything like me, it felt like everything was beyond your control. I couldn’t keep my family safe. I couldn’t hug the people who needed me. My hugs ministry at church disappeared and caring for people by cooking for them and creating spaces for joy was out of the question. My husband’s music ministry went virtual, as did my daughter’s school, and the new job I had started just months before was toxic to the point of being abusive.
Pre-covid we were constantly on the go. Whether at parties, church functions, concerts, or outings, home was a place we slept but did little else, with the exception of our Sunday “Family” Dinner. After being in the house without any change of scenery for months it started to become claustrophobic. Our home is a 1920 Sears & Roebuck bungalow. Though the 1921 catalog floorplan claimed to fit eight people around one tiny round dining table, it doesn’t feel spacious in today’s world.
At some point, probably in the late 40s or early 50s, our house went through a major renovation. A visit from the original owner's granddaughter several years ago helped me put the pieces together. Uncovering the history of the house through tiny details, like cutouts in the wood floors where a door frame used to be or mismatched moulding, has been a source of amazement. It seems the major reno included enclosing the front porch, adding a three season room and a garage, and moving the kitchen and dining room into the basement. This sounds odd, yes, but we live in the mountains and the basement is an unintentional walkout. There are windows and doors and access to the back patio which makes it perfect for entertaining. Unfortunately, the lower level was never meant to be lived in so the ceilings are very low.
I’d always wondered if I could take out the kitchen ceiling and expose the joists to give the illusion of more height. In May of 2020, I brought this up for the millionth time and, probably because he knew I was losing my mind, my husband said I should do it. Well, I took out one ceiling, then another, then another. Three ceilings came out one Sunday afternoon and underneath I found beautifully aged hardwood joists and the original sub-floor boards overhead. I was delighted.
After I sanded and cleaned and waxed up the newly exposed beam ceiling, I still had time on my hands, so I decided to refinish the cabinets. Because the moisture from the dishwasher had caused them to begin peeling, I already knew that the doors were MDF covered in laminate veneer. Beatrice, my daughter, and I took the doors off and got out the hairdryer to pop off the veneers. For two weeks I painted and sanded, then painted and sanded some more until we had beautiful vanilla cabinets with updated hardware.
If it had been any other time, that would have been the end of my project. And at any time other than early pandemic, it would have taken me months because we would have been out running around. But because I finished so quickly and was left with time on my hands, the wheels in my head started turning about what else I could do to make our tiny kitchen more useful for the amount of time I spend in.
And then I lost my job. I am sure many of you are familiar.
With my job went the money. But I still wanted to keep working on my kitchen! That is when I started scouring curbs, showrooms, and the internet for secondhand materials so I could not only keep moving along in my dream custom kitchen, but I’d also reduce the carbon footprint of our upgrade.
From penny backsplashes to secondhand cabinets that I cut down to fit our awkward spaces and a huge lot of butcher block that I intended to cut for new countertops (but abandoned because of the Wakonda level polyurethane that no amount of sanding and stripping could refinish), I found confidence with my new tools and joy in the process of bringing new life into something that someone else had discarded.
More than two years later, my life has changed drastically. My daughter is now in middle school. I started a new job with a British company that gives me loads of time off and doesn’t expect me to work overtime. But perhaps the biggest change, the love of my life decided to leave our family. His departure broke me, but after a decade of arguments over home décor, the only positive thing I could find in a life without him was the fact that I could make our home exactly what I want it to be without getting anyone’s approval.
So here we are. I’ve continued to work on making this house our forever home and had the idea to help other people do the same. The quiver of an idea came and I thought maybe I’d sell a few things to local moms, but then the bigger ideas started coming and I am excited to see where this takes us. I have big dreams for helping women displaced by domestic violence, offering workshops to single moms, and giving back to my community. But for now I am just loving the creative space to make beauty and joy out of something that may have ended up in the trash. I’m glad you’re with us and hope you’ll stick around to see where we go.
And in case you’re wondering, the kitchen is still a work in progress.
