Quick update

Hi everyone - I just wanted to pop on here quickly to let you know that I haven't stopped blogging.  July and August have been so busy that I have had to put some things on hold in my life - blogging being one of them. We are renovating at home and it has been so chaotic!

We have a small home with the majority of the house being tiled in really ugly distressed red / brown tiles - we finally decided to re-tile to update the house and make it feel more like us. Because these tiles run throughout our house - except for our bedroom and spare room - my entire house was basically a construction site. Even our bedroom became a storage room where we had to climb over chairs to get into bed. Emotionally I am so drained. Living in this chaos is just too much. I am a Taurean, I like a comfortable space and am generally not good with disruption and change in my home, so this construction work has taken its toll on me.

To add to all of this, JP and I decided to do the work ourselves which was nice in that we didn't have strangers in our home but it also means that the work takes so much longer to get done. We had a lot of help with the tiling from JP's Dad and Grandfather which really helped move things along, but it still took us about 2 weeks to get the job done. When you come home from a long day of work and still have to grout tiles or remove cabinets from the kitchen - it's really tough.

Here is kind of a before and after - we still don't have everything in place and have to clean things up but it gives you an idea of the difference the tiles make.

We are now at the point where the house is finally all tiled and grouted, we could move some furniture back into place but we are still without a kitchen.  We've ripped the old backsplash tiles off the walls, removed the old cabinets and put the new cabinet carcasses in. We still need to take the old wall units out and put the new ones up but we are just waiting for our countertops to arrive before we start piecing the kitchen back together. This is the current state of the kitchen - I love cooking so not having a kitchen is really not fun for me.

I can't wait to have my kitchen back. We had polished cement countertops made and they will hopefully be installed this week.

I know that once this is all done, it will be rewarding, but it's been so physically and emotionally draining on me. The past week I have been quite sick - battled with migraines and now a horrible stomach bug. I think I am just rundown. I know this sounds like I am just moaning for the sake of it. But one doesn't truly realise how much work it is doing this all on your own until you get started. I truly have so much more respect for people who do this work for a living.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I haven't given up on the blog. I'll be back soon and share some photos of the renovations.

Big hugs,
Charlene