Goodbye Kitchen. We never loved you anyway.

If you'll allow me a moment of self-indulgent, lightening-round documentation of the last few months...

I realized that since the last blog post covered so much time, I mistakenly excluded a very appreciated kindness. Over the summer when the Dirks' were in town, Carol whipped up some couch cushion covers for our seen-better-days couch cushions as modeled here by Chloe:

And here, modeled again by a panting Chloe:

And this is just because I find it funny:

I went to the Windy City to visit these fancy people:

These other fancy people came to visit us:

Halloween happened:

I visited Canada (I believe this picture was taken by one of Brian and Jenna's nephews..or niece? while sitting at a Tim Horton's at Niagara Falls) :

More fancy people came to visit:

Christmas came and went:

This happened:

And with that I'd like to say goodbye to 2011...and to our kitchen. The kitchen's time has come and gone, and while I never loved you anyways, kitchen, I thought I'd pay you the respect of looking back on your yellow and beige/orange/brown/pink-ish existence.

I thought I'd document one of the last times I would be using this set-up to wash our dishes. You've served us well, plastic tub, but alas, your time has also come.

So, since the kitchen is about to go bye-bye, I thought it was time to share some of the grittier details. Most of you have already seen this kitchen in person, so for the purpose of documentation, I'm going to show you anyways. You don't have to look. I hesitated at sharing this next picture...because it is disgusting. But, I'm going to anyways...because I can. We sold our fridge on Craigslist for $50! That was a cherry on top of someone removing it from our kitchen for us. It left behind a memory of where it once stood:

Goodbye last remaining piece of border.

Goodbye slightly sad color combination.

Goodbye phone jack and weird, fake brick pattern:

And more weird fake brick pattern:

Remember how we scraped white paint off the top of our stove when we first moved in? They tried the same trick to make the sink look new (?) or clean (?). With less success this round. Here is our sink which I have never shown on this blog from sheer embarrassment. Flaps of paint wave around when you run water in the sink. Dishes have never been washed in here. A barrier of plastic tub has always separated this atrocity from our dishes.

Goodbye linoleum:

And cabinets:

Goodbye, kitchen.

Our dumpster arrives Monday and Caleb and I have had a stroke of luck and have two days in a row off to start demolition. We have 5 days to demo the kitchen which includes disassembling the rest of the chimney that was started this summer and removing...everything. Our contractor begins work next week...and I will try my darndest to keep up with the blog so I don't have so much ground to cover at a time.

With all the disdain I've proclaimed for our kitchen, I want to acknowledge the fact that even having our own house is a great privilege, not something to be taken for granted or viewed as an entitlement. So please come visit so we can share food with you from our future fancy-like kitchen!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!