Real Home Renos: prologue

I came home from work to find out that our granite counters won’t be in until next Wednesday, so the kitchen remains unfinished until then. The house has been in complete disarray for the last couple weeks: the stove and dishwasher are presently under heavy plastic in the backyard; the kitchen table, microwave, cutlery and mugs are in the family room; and the fridge, along with the rest of the kitchen drawers and the innards of the cabinets are scattered around the dining room table. Thank goodness we have a kitchen in the basement; otherwise it would have been beyond miserable to have to eat out for such a long period of time.

To make things worse, the contractor who will be working on what remains of our home renovation says he’ll be able to start work this Saturday! So I'll have to spend the start of this long weekend sorting through things to determine what goes back into our unfinished kitchen and what is to be donated, and the rest of the long weekend dealing with the endless dust as the faux wood-panelling in the family room and basement is torn down and drywall put up.

(And yes, it’s a statutory holiday Saturday, but these guys are Chinese, and the Chinese generally don’t observe holidays—my parents used to own a Chinese supermarket and our store was open 365 days a year, which explains why I don’t have any memories of childhood family vacations.)

While I like to consider myself a detail-oriented planner (maybe it’s the Virgo in me), my mother’s content to sort of do things on the fly and let the “experts” take care of things. I’m very wary of leaving the details to chance like that. If we consulted with an interior designer/decorator, it would be a different story since they would have taken the time to find out what our particular tastes are, but we’re not dealing with a décor expert. Perhaps the contractor will know what’s the latest and greatest in baseboards—but will they know what colour we’d like to paint them?

To that end, I’ve spent the last few hours making detailed notes on what needs to be done and picking out paint colours for all the different rooms in the house. This entire renovation exercise has highlighted the differences between me and my mother. Left to her own devices, all our walls would be various shades of white, and our floors various shades of beige. It’s this indifference that has resulted in a dirty cotton-candy shade of pink on our two upstairs bathroom floors which doesn’t relate at all to the countertops (one of which is varying shades of beigy-brown and the other off-white.)

I’ve picked out soft shades of greens, blues, pinks, creams and taupes for the house….none of the colours are as deep as I would like, but it’s definitely an improvement over white here, there and everywhere.

We’re doing a complete overhaul of the house, which has remained pretty much the same since we first moved in 20 years ago. Once this contractor is done, we’ll replace all the window treatments and the wall-to-wall carpeting. I’ve been working on convincing my mother to re-finish the hardwood floors that are beneath the carpets—it seems such a shame to cover up such beautiful hardwood floor. Besides, we’ll be able to work in some more colours by laying down area rugs—but my mother prefers the feeling of carpet beneath her feet, and she’s bent on recovering with the same boring beige.

I will continue to fight the good fight to add some colour and spice to our home, and maybe she’ll come around to my way of thinking sooner rather than later—she did about getting a new kitchen table. She was initially set on keeping our blond kitchen table because it’s “good quality”, but it occurred to her about a week ago that it won’t match the dark granite counter we’re putting in. She’s made noises about getting a glass-topped table in a smoky gray (!!) Maybe there’s hope for us after all. :)