Once upon a time...

Someone told me I should document our home improvements for posterity, so here we go with the first-ever post!

A little history:
We bought this 1976 3-bedroom ranch in the summer of 2004. We moved from a more urban area to a very small town and love it. It's close enough to civilization , but our yard is described as "land" and the word acerage came up a few times, instead of square feet. Lots to mow, but we no longer look out our kitchen window to see our elderly next door neighbor in her kitchen window - in her nightgown. (ew)

Unfortunately, the new house was not move-in ready.
Well, no. If I was Mrs. Roper it would have been perfect. I'm talkin' original AH-VAH-CAADO green shag carpet in the family room. The 3 bedrooms all sported the shag in various 70's shades: bright lemon yellow , a nice dark brown, and in the master bedroom....orange. yeah, you heard me right. With orange, yellow and brown flowered wallpaper. sexay.
I have video to prove the hideousness that I will post at some point, but I want to get to the real problem. The Kitchen.


Small, dark, dirty, cramped... All bad kitchen words. Too bad I didn't get pictures of the Harvest Gold fridge and brown stove. It was retro. Not a good "let's sell it on E-bay"! type of retro, either. But scary.

You do get a glimpse of non-working brown stove hood here.

But, seeing as I refused to cook on the brown fire hazard, and I accidentally melted the door racks of the fridge in the dishwasher on the first day, we went out and got the pretty, shiny stainless. glee!!

We embarked on designing the kitchen, which is not easy but I could see myself doing this for a living- I felt like a HGTV designer and I was in my friggin GLORY!

I went to Home Depot with my plans and they drew everything up , ordered the cabinets and we waited...

Part 2 tomorrow, but I will leave you with this lovely sneak peek:

POOP!!! ew, ew, ew, ew,ew!!!!!!