MommyCoddle

Woodlawn // weekending

Another weekend at Woodlawn means a few more steps forward on progress. And as with any remodeling project, there have been bumps in the road. 

I've been scheduling the arrival of everything from flooring to appliances and kitchen cabinets. And even with my cushions for setbacks and issues, things are still "lost" or there's "no word from the manufacturer".

The flooring debacle was a huge headache. Now the dishwasher is MIA. And the kitchen cabinets have no expected arrival date, despite the fact that I was given next week as an arrival date and I just bought a plane ticket for Dan's brother-in-law to come out and install them...with a cushion for "issues". So we're sweating a few things around here. 

Not only have I memorized the number for Home Depot, I've also memorized the number menus. Press 3 for kitchens. 5 for flooring. 0 for customer service... 

In the meantime, we keep taking little steps forward.

This weekend and last, we investigated a leak in the den. Expected with any old house. 

We moved a few things into the attic which means the girls rediscovered some favorite toys that had been stashed away. And I had to shoo little hands from opening up boxes of packed up, too-small clothes and shoes. The rediscovering of these things is like a mini-Christmas.

So we're moving forward. Little by little. I feel like we are on the cusp of things getting really crazy. Good crazy. But crazy nonetheless. 

Hope you all had a good weekend, too...more soon!

Woodlawn // The kitchen, before

There were a lot of things that had to fall into place before we could even consider that we might be able to live at Woodlawn. So many question marks that we even felt nervous driving back that long driveway to poke around the place. I won't publicly confess how many drive-bys I did for those months we spent in "house limbo".

On one particularly brave day, we actually peeked in the windows. Heaven forbid! But I got a glimpse that day of some pretty good things going on inside, despite the disrepair. So when we finally had the chance to actually walk through the house without feeling like a couple of burglars scouting out the place? That was pretty exciting. 

When we first went through the family had yet to move everything out. Later there would be dumpsters, auctions and sales. 

But underneath all that I was seeing was what I knew had been the most beautiful home. Elegant. Lovely. Full of life. 

One of our first big projects at the house has been the kitchen. The red linoleum countertops were reminiscent of the ones in the house I grew up in, but all nostalgia aside, I was easily able to see them go. 

All of our remodeling plans for house have been basically squished into just a few weeks. Decisions I feel like most people spend months making, I've had to make in days and weeks of time. It's been a wee bit stressful. And completely, "Is this really happening?" strange and amazing.

 

But now, plans have been finalized. Cabinets have been ordered. Flooring picked out. And I'll share all that soon. For now, I'm just grateful that I can finally sleep at night without dreaming of soft-close kitchen drawers, refrigerators, and paint chips.