Last summer, our back porch started to collapse.
“It did not.” (That’s my husband talking.)
“Yes, it did.”
“We could have fixed it.”
“Yes, but we would have been spending money to fix something we didn’t want.”
(Silence)
“John. We talked about needing just a teeny bit more space in our kitchen. Remember? Just enough for a table and chairs?”
“Well, yes.”
“Well, if we fixed the porch as it was, we couldn’t have bumped out the kitchen.”
“Well, right.”
“Well, then.”
“Well.”
As I was saying, last summer, our back porch started to collapse. This actually was good news, because:
– What I really wanted was a new kitchen.
– But to expand the kitchen one millimeter, we had to rebuild the porch to support it.
– And to rebuild the porch, we had to build out the basement first to support IT.
– And if the porch was already collapsing (“No, it wasn’t.” “Can it, Darling.”), we HAD to get the ball rolling on the whole darn project, because, well, it was a SAFETY issue. (“Sigh.”)
The bad news was that Phase I – the basement expansion and new porch- was going to take about a year and cost a whole lot of money.
Fast forward to now. I’m pleased to report that we have survived! A bit weary and financially battered, but we survived. I didn’t even drag you through it. I didn’t want to live it; why would you want to read about it?
And now, we begin Phase II: the kitchen renovation.
This, Gentle Readers, is the fun part.
Annie Elliott – aka bossy color – is an interior decorator and design blogger in Washington, D.C. She has been quoted in publications from The New York Times to Real Simple and is considered an expert on color, residential space planning, and telling people what to do in the nicest way possible.