The kitchen in my house has been in need of a major upgrade and remodel since the day I moved in, but I have ignored this need. Major remodeling projects stress me out. I mean, like irrationally stressed out. Hair falling out in clumps and mysterious itchy rashes kind of stressed out. The bathroom remodel wasn’t too bad because we overpaid someone else to do it with the guaranteed time frame. The kitchen is another story. First of all, a kitchen remodel is not cheap and if you are paying someone to do it, it is really not cheap. Secondly, I feel that the chaos of a kitchen remodel would be my undoing.

Sometime recently, a mysterious puddle of water would just show up next to the fridge. Michael did some research and read something about a drain in the freezer. So while I spent last Thursday cleaning the house, Michael spent the day taking our refrigerator apart. The results of his labor is that we ended up refrigerator shopping on Sunday. I don’t want to tell you which refrigerator we ended up purchasing, mostly because I am embarrassed. It’s not that it is crazy expensive or anything like that. We stayed within our budget and it will be wonderful. There’s a TV screen in the door. That’s the embarrassing part, but Michael really pushed for it because of my obsessive menu planning. The problem is that the refrigerator is wider than the old one. Actually, we were very very limited in choices based on width and we bought this fridge knowing that it was not going to fit. A cabinet will have to be removed. I had to resist the urge to lay down on the floor of the appliance section of the store we were in during this whole discussion on refrigerator width.

Michael got a snow day on Monday and he spent the day assembling a set of shelves for the basement so that I could organize rarely used kitchen items. Then he removed the cabinet to make space for the new refrigerator that is arriving on Saturday. He sent me a picture of the space and I sighed with relief. It really isn’t so bad back there. Michael asked me what I had expected to see behind the cabinet and I sent him a gif of the fridge scene from Ghostbusters. I truly expected a doorway to Hell, because that’s what I do. Remember when I was convinced that the bathroom floor was going to collapse into the basement when Michael replaced the toilet? Or that time Michael replaced an outlet in the living room and I was convinced that if he removed the old one there would be nothing there at all? I’m not sure I have the right constitution for home ownership, but I was so encouraged by the shape of the wall behind the removed cabinet that we have decided to remodel one side of the kitchen. The south wall of the kitchen will require a complete demo and some electrical work, but the north wall, the one with the fridge and stove requires nothing more than a coat of paint and some new cabinets. We’re ignoring the floor for now.

All of this is dependent on if and when IKEA gets the cabinets in that I want, but I feel pretty confident that we could get the walls painted and new cabinets up in two weekends, without too much disruption. No one is more surprised than I am about how calmly I’m walking into this remodeling project. Hair is still intact and I haven’t even scratched and clawed at my skin once. I’m even excited about the whole thing.