Day 22 and paint is happening! Ok, so it’s merely priming and first coat kind of stuff, but there is color on the walls, and I can begin to imagine the kitchen as my kitchen, our home, instead of simply a project to be completed. Unfortunately, this also reminds me of just how much I miss having a kitchen, cooking, creating and participating in (culinarily speaking) our most bountiful time of year: summer. I miss cooking. I miss it every time I have a mediocre meal or sandwich (like last night and today) from a take-out place, and I miss it when I put on my summer clothes that just aren’t fitting me quite as well as they did last year (or even earlier this year). I know “this too shall pass” and that it’s all for a good cause, that the reward will be worth the suffering (really, more like inconvenience), but it’s still hard. Sigh.

We also tried out a few stain samples on a piece of our original fir flooring in the kitchen. Dave got several fingertip-sized smears on a board for us to determine which ones we’d like to try on full boards. We’re trying to embrace what the wood is (warm, unique and varied) while nudging the color toward something that fits our style, and what we perceive as the right thing for the house (medium-dark, rich, luxe). Eventually, as the project nears completion in the kitchen, the Team will move on to refinish the rest of the main level, so the stain we choose for the kitchen will dictate the direction for all of the floors. The other floors are also oak, not soft fir, and therefore will need some other tweaking to achieve a visually (mostly) seamless look. We have wood floors running throughout the house and we want them to look like kin. Maybe even siblings. With a strong gene pool. Like me and my siblings. It’ll be tricky, but I know Dave will get it right.

Tomorrow the early-stages painting will get finished up, and they’ll start on the floors: laying out the new pieces, patching some of the rough or hole-y spots, and testing out more stain samples. By week’s end, we will have kitchen floors. This also means that there can’t be any more cute dog-laying-at-their-feet moments, no more coming in through the side door with wet feet, no more “it doesn’t matter, the floors are getting refinished” uncleanliness. From here on it, it’s finish, finish, finish.

Some pictures from today. The colors look different in different lights, and will continue to change as the rest of the elements come into the space. But I think you can get a sense of the overall color scheme. Hope you like it!