Slooooow progress, and a little help from our friends to speed it up

Now I am three weeks into my Spring semester, and Richard is working overtime almost every week with the classes and extra shifts that are all a part of his training for Duke Life Flight. The time that we are able to devote to house projects had diminished rapidly, so progress is slow.

Two weeks ago it seems that everything in the house decided to leak.  First the washer hookup, which Richard fixed.  Then the kitchen sink piping, (which had no kitchen sink connected to it), which Richard fixed.  And then the bathroom sink--our only functioning sink in the whole house--which again, Richard fixed.  I am so thankful to have such a handy husband!  He is becoming quite the experienced plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc, etc...  It seemed that every time we took a step forward, we got pushed two steps back, and this was very discouraging for the both of us.  We would never get a working kitchen at this rate, and we'd be forced to eat these microwavable meals forever!

Our friends Matt and Kate came by one evening to drop something off at the house.  Kate, after taking the tour of the house, said "you're getting your kitchen this weekend! we are coming to help you."  I knew that they would definitely come and help us for a full day, but I certainly didn't expect for us to have our kitchen by the end of it, given our poor time estimate with all the other projects.

Last Saturday Matt and Kate spent all day with us and by the end of a full day's work we now had our kitchen counters and our sink in place! I could not believe it!

By Tuesday Richard had connected the sink, Wednesday-the oven, Thursday- the dishwasher, Friday-the pantry shelving!  We have our kitchen!!!  (except for the cabinet doors, but those are more cosmetic than necessity)

Thursday night I cooked for the first time since before Christmas! We had slow-baked lemon and ginger salmon, fresh steamed broccoli and rice!  And I could not pass up the opportunity to use our amazing oven to bake cookies to top off the evening!  And at the end of it all, I no longer had to cart dishes to the bathroom sink to wash them! I just rinsed in our KITCHEN SINK :) and put them in our DISHWASHER!  (I'm a little excited if you can't tell).

I've been unpacking boxes and organizing while Richard continues to work on the kitchen. Painting progress is slow. It took me 4 hours to prime 2 window trims, and another 2.5 hours to paint just one.  I've got the molding and window trim in the whole house to go.  At this rate I will graduate from PT school before I finish painting this house.


Updated pictures coming soon...