let the adventure begin.

Hello friends!

We wrapped up a great school year and jumped full steam into summer with Gabe’s 8th birthday on Memorial Day weekend, which was also the weekend our new assistant pastor and his family moved to Columbia from St. Louis.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here on the blog, but David and I leave in about a week for 10 days in the Middle East. He’ll be teaching at a conference, and we’ll visit some friends who work there. In addition, we get to spend three glorious days at the Red Sea celebrating our 15th anniversary.

This spring we got vaccinations, updated passports, and coordinated childcare for the kids, who will be staying with David’s parents, attending VBS one week, and hanging out with other family and friends. I’ll spend this coming week getting Judah all ready for wilderness camp, which starts right after David and I fly home, and lasts two weeks.

On top of all this, we got The Call from our contractor, Scott, this Tuesday, saying he and his crew will be at our house bright and early Monday morning to start the kitchen renovation.

Gulp.

Well, if there’s one thing I do well in times of stress, it’s cleaning, purging and packing.

Actually, what I really do well when I’m stressed is baking. David comes home sometimes and says, “Uh oh, are you stress-baking again?” Thankfully everyone benefits in times of stress (except me, who has to pull out a box of stale-ish gluten free Joe Joe’s when my family is consuming melty chocolate chip cookies).

Second to baking, it’s definitely purging and organizing for me. Third would be knitting.

But I digress.

Anyway, I immediately set to work readying our kitchen and dining room. We’ll also need to empty the hall closet where our washer and dryer will be permanently moved, and our back porch.

Here I am in the midst of the chaos, Facetiming with a friend in the Middle East about what David and I should pack:

 

 

I’m determined to do a better job of blogging regularly about this renovation process than I did with the last one, even if it’s just with phone pictures.

So here’s what we did first:

Last month, David and I spent a Saturday pulling everything down from our attic; organizing and purging it all. This was actually a bigger job than packing up our kitchen has been. We’ve lived here almost 6 years, and hadn’t touched a lot of the things since we moved in. Some of it was from our early years of marriage. Some of it was from living overseas.

Though our attic is only accessible by a pull-down door and ladder, it’s very spacious, and since the closets in our house are small, I’ve sort of used it as a giant extra closet. We’ve even shoved furniture up there. Over time, it became so overgrown with stuff, that we could barely move. So we were due to organize it.

We laughed because this task was on our to-do list all fall and winter, while it was cool out, but we never got to it. Instead we did our project in late May, when the attic was about 95 degrees, and we dripped sweat the whole time.

I worked hard at purging and organizing everything we pulled down, while David laid more floor boards under the eves for storage. My favorite thing was organizing the kids’ clothes I’m storing into properly marked bins.

 

 

 

As per usual, we forgot to snap a good “before” pic of the attic, but imagine all of this jumbled with stuff. It’s an amazing improvement.

 

 

Another reason we needed to organize is that this chimney will be coming out. And our kitchen and dining ceilings are going to be vaulted!

Scott came in late May to take some more measurements and he sat with me for an hour and heard my vision for our space, and looked at Pinterest  photos with me. He is just pretty great. He thrives on making spaces — especially in older homes — useful for the people who live in them.

Therefore, he was inspired to hear the Gentino Family Challenges: that we have people in our house almost daily — including groups up to 40 — that we need lots of counter space for various cooking and canning and kombucha-brewing endeavors, and that I need way more homeschool storage in the dining room.

We came to a decision which really blessed my heart, and that was to not move our washer/dryer into a counter in the dining room, but to instead widen the doorway of this hall closet and stick them in there with a bi-fold door.

That will be the first part of the renovation, so that we can do laundry again ASAP.

 

 

This leaves more space in the dining room for pretty built-ins for homeschooling. Now I realize it’s hard for you to get a feel for the things I’m talking about just now, especially those of you who haven’t been in our house. Thus, I’ll try to show lots of pictures. I think it will help when the demo starts happening and the rooms open up.

So that was May.

Packing the dining room and kitchen haven’t been bad actually. Because they’re small, without much storage, we’ve had to constantly keep them purged and streamlined. So it was just a matter of figuring out what we’ll keep for our makeshift kitchen, and what needs to be boxed up for the attic and David’s workshop.

 

 

 

This is where I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the difference between this renovation and our last (which started two and a half years ago). My kids are actually old enough to be useful!

It’s a game-changer, you guys. We’ve been putting them to work all week.

 

 

 

 

 

Noah was pleased to be on “SCOBY-duty.” The kombucha operation is being put on hold for the duration, and my SCOBY’s are happily ensconced in their SCOBY hotel (which is just a jar with unfiltered kombucha). Guys, I have big dreams for my kombucha in our new kitchen.

Next David and I began to set up our makeshift kitchen, which is why the living room needed to be cleared out.

 

 

That was the goal of today, as well as packing up pots and pans and cookbooks.

Here’s what we’ve got so far:

 

 

David told me I should count it a real parenting victory that when Gabe noticed the borrowed microwave in our living room, he asked, “Dad, what’s this?”

Spoiler alert: the new kitchen will have a microwave. After 6 years without one, it’s time to go mainstream again. Why, you ask? Because my kids are old enough to help make their own meals — heat up leftovers, pop popcorn. I feel that the time has come.

I deep-cleaned our master bathroom today, and our kitchen island will go in there for a draining rack and probably the coffee maker. One sink will be devoted to hand washing, tooth brushing, etc, and the other to kitchen duties. It’s not ideal, you guys. But at least we don’t have to use the crumbling bathtub in the kids’ bathroom.

How will we cook food, you ask?

Well, I’m thinking primarily the Instant pot.

David’s mom, Linda, has generously offered for me to borrow hers all summer. What do you guys think? Any other ideas? We’ll buy a hotplate too. The main task for tomorrow, before I grocery shop for the week, is to look up Instant pot recipes for dinner.

 

 

Thankfully we only had one casualty from our week of packing up. I’ve had that cute little plant for several years. Ah well, you win some you lose some.

And that’s the first update, my friends!

The best part about all of this is that right about the time demolition starts, David and I will jump on a plane for 10 days and leave his parents to deal with the renovation.

Isn’t that nice of us?