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The past two posts (here and here ) have discussed my life during a 13 month house and kitchen remodel. Up until now I've talked about how we used a temporary and somewhat complete kitchen we had set-up in our dining room. Unfortunately, this kitchen did not last the entire remodel. Since the remodel involved refinishing the hardwood floors in the otherwise non-remodeled parts of the house, a time came when the only unaffected room was our master bedroom and bath. And because of a “glitch” (in other words, someone messed up!) what should have been a two-week process lasted 8 weeks. As a result, our master bedroom served for two months as our living space, our cooking space and part of our storage space for everything we owned. The result was not particularly fun. We set up a toaster oven and microwave for cooking. We move our fridge to our front porch - yes it looked funny and yes my neighbors probably cringed every time they saw it, but it was the only place we had! We lived this way for approximately 2 months. If you can't tell, we're troopers and we didn't realize just how long we'd be living like that. So we roughed it. Towards the end we ate at restaurants, ate frozen microwaveable food, and, unfortunately, gained weight. I would not recommend this approach to others. Our temporary kitchen in our dining room, although difficult, was wonderful in comparison. We ate home cooked meals and enjoyed our meals relaxing at the dinner table. Cooking and eating in an over stuffed bedroom that was not meant for cooking was tough. But even when we later gained a bit more flexibility in where we could store things, surviving with just a toaster oven and microwave is in itself a hard transition from a full kitchen. This stage of our remodel occurred during the winter and early spring so we could not always grill outdoors. What did we cook? I think I may have tried to erase this from my memory because I can't remember much. I know that on many nights, especially the last couple of weeks, we ended up eating out. When we did "cook" we tended to have frozen food we could microwave (pizza's, frozen dinners, etc) or heat in the toaster oven (fish sticks, sandwiches, etc). Fortunately, because we still had a fridge, breakfast and lunch were still relatively normal meals but dinner was always a challenge. The act of eating was also a bit of a problem. For about 4 weeks we did not have a table to eat at. In fact, the only place we had to sit in the whole house was our bed. Did I mention it's a water bed? It was a bit awkward eating in it.  Beauty emerges from the chaos During the last few weeks of construction, spring was starting to bloom. One day, while the inside of the house looked about as dreary as it could possibly look, one of my Amaryllis plants decided to bloom. I guess what they say about neglect is true for the Amaryllis because I can assure you I hadn't looked at it in weeks. Just seeing the huge and beautiful bloom gave me hope we would one day have a kitchen (and a house for that matter) again. Slowly, we did finally get access to various parts of our new kitchen. We could put some stuff in the cupboards, use the sink and one day the oven even worked! It was a massive celebration, we ran to the store and cooked our first meal in our new, although not yet finished kitchen the same night. I don't remember what we had but I know it was amazing! Since the construction finished we've cooked many many meals and truly love our kitchen, so as I write this I don't wonder if it was worth being kitchen orphans. I know it was and while I wouldn't look forward to the process I would do it again. So, for any of you considering a kitchen remodel, remember the end does justify the pain you will endure during the process. I also learned a lot about the process and next time we do a kitchen remodel (hopefully not for many years!) we will be better prepared. In a subsequent post I'll summarize what we learned and hopefully it will help someone else so they don't suffer quite as much as we did!
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