Hey do you guys want to see my fridge?
Sorry, did you think it was a new one? I’m sorry, too. That is the same wrong-model damaged fridge that was sitting in the middle of my kitchen the last time I talked with you. The difference is that we pushed it more toward the dining room so that it is easier to move around and access our old beige fridge, which is still sitting against an unfinished wall.
We’ve had a major stall on the kitchen project because of this. So far Sears has been super uncommunicative about the issue and are still “looking into it,” and we don’t want to buy a another fridge until we know how this is resolved. If two fridges feels like too many… three won’t be an improvement.
At the same time, we can’t take the next step in the redesign until we have the final fridge because the next project is to build cabinets around the fridge to finish that wall. Since we don’t know how this will end we don’t know our final dimensions. It’s an overall bummer. Thanks for listening.
So all of this has made me pretty cranky and I took out that energy to finally do a small project that I’ve been putting off for years: paint our exterior doors.
I almost didn’t post about this project given how simple it is, but with a fridge in the middle of my kitchen, to be honest I don’t have a lot of DIY stuff to be talking about right now. I also really wanted to share it to encourage everyone to go and do those small, annoying projects that you never seem to have time for. Because these doors have made me A LOT happier.
You’ve seen these in a lot of pictures of mine over the years, making bad things look worse and nice things look worse.
They are pretty much the last vestige of the old paint color, a warmish sickly beige that, along with its cousins, used to coat nearly every surface in this house.
The reason they stayed for so long is that they’re not permanent. We eventually plan to replace them with nice, new doors – possibly stained wood – so it seemed a waste of time to paint them. My time is something I’m very concerned with since I never have enough of it and wasting it painting temporary doors felt silly.
Besides, if I am going to paint temporary doors, why wouldn’t I paint them a fun color, like black or yellow or red? And in that case, shouldn’t I go get some paint samples and….?
Well I finally got sick of them and sick of not being able to work on the kitchen and sick of how ugly the kitchen is looking. So I grabbed a paintbrush and in practically no time they were a clean, shiny white just like the rest of our trim.
Doesn’t that make you breathe a sigh of relief? It’s like scratching an itch I didn’t know I had that has been itching for five years.
Here’s a real-life picture, complete with to-be-discarded kitchen stuff that doesn’t work with the new induction cooktop.
Suddenly, the doors don’t call attention to themselves and the nice things I’ve bothered to create/curate around them look much better. I’m honestly happier than if I had done something eye-catching with them to “make it fun.” They just blend in.
So, I wanted to share this to encourage you, if you are at all like me and overthink everything, to find the same relief. Even if it isn’t a long-term solution, even if you could be more productive focusing on something else, even if you do it a little fancier with more time and supplies… just deal with the thing thats driving you crazy.
And wish me luck with the other thing that’s driving me crazy… I’ll look forward to sharing the whole fridge saga once it has been resolved!
It’s those little fixes that have the most bang, honestly. So far this summer I’ve re-attached a blind, put up curtain rods AND their curtains, and … I guess that’s all, so far. But they’d been nagging me for a few years, so I’m happy. Also, these are the kinds of chores that my mother enjoyed doing for me (and I enjoyed letting her do); now I’m doing them myself and really surprised that I’m doing all right!
Lol! I feel your pain in regards to refrigerators. My son and son-in-law gave up half of their Saturday to help the hubs and I play musical fridges (3 fridges and one freezer actually). We bought my in-laws house (which is a half acre away from our house) some years back and are putting it up for sale soon. So the fridge and freezer that were over there needed to come over here. The fridge that was in our kitchen was going to replace the one in our garage and the one in our garage was going back to the other house. The prep work was one full, very sweaty Friday rearranging things in the garage so we could put the freezer next to the fridge in there. Saturday saw the big swap out commence! Move house fridge to opposite wall, plug in. Move other house fridge (fridge B) into this house. Put stuff in freezer into ice chests, move ice chests and freezer to this house, set freezer down on driveway to defrost. Clean fridge B and place in fridge A’s old location. Move stuff from fridge A to fridge B. Clean fridge A. Move fridge A to garage. Transfer stuff from fridge C to fridge A. Clean fridge C. Bring fridge C to other house. Push fridge B to it’s new spot. Feed three men lunch and promise them a steak dinner on Sunday. Spend four hours watching ice melt from the freezer sitting in the driveway. Wipe down freezer, place next to garage fridge, reload, clean ice chests, store ice chests and….have a couple of beers and a well deserved bath!
Your doors great by the way! Hope Sears doesn’t give you the run around for much longer.
Oh what a difference and how good they look. I hear you …! Thank you. Good luck with the fridge saga.