My house looks like a tornado went through it, from front to back.
We are installing new kitchen cupboards in June and decided we would take out the carpeting, too, and install something else. Anything else.
I looked at hard-wood flooring, but I already have original hard wood everywhere else in the house. So then we looked at laminate wood floors which are much easier to install, but it’s basically the same thing. Not bad, but if I have the real McCoy in the dining room, why do fake hard-wood flooring in the kitchen? And then there are wood-looking ceramic tiles. These are amazing as they do look just like wood, but again, the same argument holds.
So we looked at ceramic-looking ceramic tiles and real slate, but both are very hard to install and expensive. But then we found a wood-laminate that looks like slate.
By this time my head was reeling.
First we tore up the existing kitchen floor to see what we needed to do to repair it and prep it for a new floor. Beneath the carpet and the 1950s-era linoleum and the black tar paper glued to the floor with a zillion gallons of glue, is indeed the original hardwood flooring.
It looks like a wreck, but we had an expert out who assures us the floor is great. He actually said the black paper, glue and linoleum had preserved and protected the floor from damage. So we are going to bite the bullet and refinish the floor on the north half of the house.
So while waiting until the end of May to have the floors done, I began my painting. I’m only painting where the walls will show, so my kitchen now is a hodge-podge of six different colors. Plus, I got to looking at all the wood work, which someone at some point painted white.
I wondered, ‘How hard it would be to strip 70 years worth of paint off two doors, door frames, windows and baseboards?’ Well, I still have a couple weeks to decide.
So for the next month, my kitchen will stay trashed and then it will get worse before it gets better, but I just have to keep my eye on the finished goal and take deep breaths. A lot of them.
Sometimes we have to suffer the growing pains in life, just as in my kitchen, to come out stronger and better on the other side.
Louise Van Poll is a columnist and freelance writer for the Plainsman.
