Beauty Among the Rubble

If you have been reading since the beginning, you know that there has been construction going on in our house.  For 9 years.  It started when we got married.  When we wed and moved in, everything was white and hunter green.  My sweet bachelor husband had found a color scheme and stuck with it, through the entire house.  Having three kids and three dogs between us, the white kitchen just didn't make sense, so he remodeled the kitchen.  Then, we realized that we needed a bigger family room.  So he turned the carport into a family room and the former family room into a dining room.

Then we got pregnant with Hannah.  So he turned the dining room into a nursery, and decided to remodel the basement into a master suite and laundry room for us.  And since he had remodeled every single room, save one bathroom, I thought we were done.

Then surprise!  We found out we were pregnant with Charlotte.  And thus he began the new addition to the back of the house.  It was much needed.  Josh got a bigger room that could be turned into a guest room, and we added a bathroom on the main floor and a playroom (yay!), as well as a bigger dining room to house our bigger better table.  We also got a nifty new deck out of it.

The great part of it?  My crafty husband did every single bit of this by himself.  I have been awed and amazed by the improvements he has made to the house.  I love that there isn't one bit of hunter green and white left (except in that one bathroom), and that our house is large enough for our whole family.  I love watching him work with his hands and watching him lovingly create things for us.  I love that when we sit down at our brand new table in our brand new dining room, that he made it all, right down to the table and chairs.

The not so great part of it?  The mess.  It's not uncommon for tools to be strewn across the kitchen counter, or paintbrushes to be in the refrigerator.  The kitchen sink often has paint splatters in it, and the smell of polyurethane is as common as dinner cooking.  And he is never so happy as when there is a fine layer of sheet rock dust covering every surface.

While we were on spring break, he took the opportunity to regrout the tile in the dining room/kitchen.  Which first meant that he had to grind away the old grout.  Which meant that we arrived home to a layer of dust over everything.  And lest you think I exaggerate, we had to wash the dishes inside the cabinets before we could use them.  Lovely.  One reason that Cleanapalooza just had to happen.

Well, it appears that when I cleaned the kitchen, I skipped a spot, because when I opened the pantry, I found this.

Unfortunately, it was not the cleaning fairy that had come to see us.

Hannah made me a "present."  Her footprint and a bunch of baby footprints.

Presents like this make the rubble worth it.

(but I did clean it up as soon as she went to bed!)