Today I was interviewed by The Tennessean for an article that is coming out in Sunday’s paper on midwifery in Tennessee. How was I found, you wonder? Because I constantly open my big fat mouth and splurt about midwives all over the internets. For fun.

I am sooooo excited about this article (the second newspaper article I’ve been interviewed for… EVER!) because I really enjoy reading this health reporter’s columns as she’s very fair and balanced. And I think we could all use a bit more health reporting that is balanced. Something along the lines of OMG! SWINE FLU = THE APOCALYPSE!

Plus I love that she’s bringing attention to midwifery – a subject that sadly very few women know anything about. I know that I personally knew nothing about midwifery until I started doing my own research because it’s just not in the public eye.

At any rate, this is all falling on the week that we returned from a fun trip to the East Coast. Meaning I had no food in the house and the house was a mess. We had just finished painting the kitchen floor, so the kitchen was ripped apart. And the drywall for the upstairs gets delivered tomorrow morning with the crew right behind ready to start working. Tomorrow morning Matt has his board certification exam, which is just a tiny little bit important. Meaning if he passes he gets a nice fat raise. And the letters behind his name will now say “M.A.  B.C.B.A.”

Then we’ve got Matt’s climbing buddy coming in from Massachusetts on Saturday to go rock climbing for the weekend, and my mom arrives on Monday morning to hang out with me for a week. Which means I will frantically clean every nook and cranny of my house only to have her arrive and clean it all much better than I did the first time. And I will love and adore her for it.

And somewhere in there, I need to finish the nursery because the photographer from The Tennessean will be coming by to take a picture. Of me. At seven months pregnant and heavy enough to be a mean and competitive contestant on The Biggest Loser.

Strangely enough, all of this hectic activity is actually really good for me. I work best under tight deadlines, and frankly get a rush from anything that feels a little bit like a high school theatrical production.

But if I completely crash and forget to pick my mom up from the airport on Monday morning, can someone please tell her it was all because I opened my big fat mouth? She’ll roll her eyes and understand.

A few years ago, after much debating, my parents decided to keep the house they had lived in nearly my entire life, but renovate it throughout. They figured that in their mid-fifties it might be nice to have things like, oh, say… central air. And a fridge that wasn’t puke yellow and from 1989.

Projects like installing central air and wood floors throughout your house are a bit of a pain, but nothing is as much of a pain as knocking down a wall in your kitchen, gutting it, and putting in a new kitchen from the ground up. This I know from experience, although my parent’s budget and timeline was far different than ours. They hired an awesome contractor and over the span of several months lived in their finished basement while the kitchen was being renovated. For those many months, they referred to the room in the finished basement as “The Studio” and became well accustomed to cooking with a toaster and microwave and living out of a dorm-sized fridge.

This past weekend, we blocked off our own kitchen to finally get around to painting the wood floors. Because we didn’t want to push our luck, we decided to plan the painting with the most conservative of timelines including two full days between coats for optimal drying time. Which meant that I had 5 days worth of food to plan out in advance with a toaster oven and basement fridge as my only options.

I spent much of Friday at the grocery store and in the kitchen making up a whole host of sandwiches, cutting up cucumbers and summer squash and marinating chicken that could be grilled outside. We’re on day 4 of living without a kitchen, and I’ll be honest, the sandwiches are getting old. Same for washing our dirty dishes in the bathroom sink. And going outside and around to the back of the house to get milk from the basement fridge.

Here’s what our dining room currently looks like with a mattress blocking off the door to the kitchen and the dining room table covered with our picnic staples.

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And here’s the kitchen floor drying.

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After five days of living like this, I honestly cannot imagine how my parents lived for months on end in The Studio. But then again, our finished project is nothing like theirs.

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I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that every time I go to my mom’s house I beg to cook a meal, and the entire time I talk to my pretend audience as if I’m a Food Network chef.

A week or so before we moved into the house, our friend Kendall came over to help Matt cut and install the soapstone countertops. So this weekend Matt sanded and finished them off with a coat of mineral oil.

Ok, mineral oil?! Did you know that it’s a laxative? We went into both Home Depot and Ace looking for mineral oil and they looked at us like we had horns on our heads. Matt wound up picking it up at the grocery store where all the other laxatives are stored. I was extremely grossed out watching him wipe laxative all over our countertops to seal them.

Here are some before and after photos. The mineral oil turns the countertops really dark, but as it evaporates over a few days it lightens up. So currently the countertops are in between these two grays and we’ll see how much lighter they get. I don’t like the look of the really dark countertops, so I’m hoping they continue to lighten a bit.

Before:

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After:

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One side done, one side waiting, and our new kitchen light!

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Matt got a ton done in the kitchen this weekend. I say “Matt” because I was feeling a bit under the weather, and wasn’t good for much of anything other than half-heartedly assembling my in-cabinet organizers from IKEA. So everything you see is thanks to his hard work.

We had a plumber come on Saturday to run pipes for our new sink. He was a ripoff so we didn’t have him complete the necessary plumbing (running pipes for the dishwasher), but Matt should be able to do that. He also took a look at our gas fireplace and assessed that all it needs is one new valve which we should be able to replace ourselves. So I’m hopeful that we’ll have a fully functional fireplace for the holidays!

After Matt finished installing all of the base cabinets, he wanted to move the fridge and dishwasher into place so he could see how much space he would have to built a support structure around the dishwasher to hold up the soapstone. IKEA gave us these chintzy support panels to hold it up, but we’re skeptical, so he will build a wooden frame just to be safe. Then the countertops will go in – probably next weekend.

We also are waiting for our electrician to come and finish the electrical in the kitchen. So until then, all of the appliances have been moved back into the kitchen to get them out of the living room and dining room, so I can start cleaning the house and getting ready for us to move in!

Here’s a sneak peek at what the kitchen will look like without the countertop, backsplash, and painted floor (the three things with color!) It’s really starting to come together!

From Daily Daguerreotype

From Daily Daguerreotype

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The soapstone arrived in a semi truck on Monday. The driver hopped out of the car and immediately said to Matt, “I don’t know how we’re going to do this.” Matt thought he meant “I don’t know how we’re going to move this into your house just the two of us.” But what the guy REALLY meant was, “I don’t even have the right equipment to get this nearly 800 pound monstrosity off the truck.”

So I put on my thinking cap and came up with The Plan. The driver would take the soapstone back to the warehouse 10 minutes away, and hold it there til Wednesday when we could come by with a U-Haul truck. They could then load the soapstone onto our truck with their machine, and we would disassemble the wooden frame and cut up the soapstone right on the truck to make smaller slices that Matt and I could carry into the house. You think I’m good for nothing around here except painting yellow stripes on the walls, don’t you! WELL, THINK AGAIN!

So here is pictorial evidence of how our Wednesday went down.

At ABF to pick up the slabs

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U-Haul pulls through in the clutch

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The nice ABF guy loads up our pallet onto his thinger

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Nearly 800 pounds of awesomeness

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He posed for me on this one

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She’s in!

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Here are the two slabs standing upright in their wooden casing

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They sent some samples so Matt could practice cutting. Very nice gesture.

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At home after disassembling one half of the wooden casing. Taking that apart was actually tougher than cutting and moving the soapstone itself. I left most of this work to Matt and happily stood there holding tools for him.

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Our two slabs!

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Matt putting the diamond blade on the circular saw

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Tape on the bottom of the saw to prevent scratching the soapstone

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The last picture before my camera battery died… right before Matt made the first cut.

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Matt actually only had to make one cut, because the other pieces were light enough for us to lift them. So the remainder of the cutting will happen on Countertop Installation Day, which I believe is fast-approaching! All in all, the whole process was easier than expected, since much of the weight was in the wooden pallet and casing. Once that was removed, it was easy as pie!

But I am taking today off. Ya know… to recuperate.

Today was the fun and exhausting day where we picked up the 759 pounds of soapstone and brought them home to slice up and turn into countertop. But before we get to that…

Last night my friend June came over to help me paint stripes in the breakfast nook. I have yet to erase all of the pencil lines, but I’m already psyched with how it turned out. It’s subtle and calms down the bright yellow that was a bit overwhelming to take in all at once. So thank you, June! And I’m sorry I cut you in half in the picture.

From Daily Daguerreotype

From Daily Daguerreotype

Also gets me motivated to take down those horrible maroon drapes in the dining room and clean up the breakfast nook window. All in due time, my friends.