Reimagining Sithean: Clean Spots
When I’m tidying in the house, I’m not above going around proudly announcing that I’ve made a clean spot. It’s not that our house isn’t clean – it generally is, or was, prior to the endless dustathon that is renovating – but we’ve been so smushed into our space for so long that the clutter has become ubiquitous.
Similarly, our land was covered in snow for so long I almost forgot what it looks like. The house has been under construction for nearly half a year, and with that people walking through our home from the wee hours of the morning. What it’s like not to have noise and sawdust and construction materials everywhere. We’re coming to the end of the interior work in a little over a month, and it can’t come soon enough.
Every day it’s something here, and then the weekends we try to clean and make the house liveable for a couple of days so that we get some respite before doing it all over again.
It’s been over 170 days with a temporary kitchen, minus the delightful 10 days we spent in a rental up the road while insulation was being blown in. We’ve lived through a freezing cold home addition due to the heating system swap taking 4x the time estimated, endless dirt and dust, spiking utility bills, unexpected expenses and some pretty big disagreements with our builder.
While we like many of the folks that come with our homebuilding project, it can’t be over too soon. And we’ve had some challenges with the General Contractor management – they do good work, but they aren’t the easiest to work with, and they have changed scope without telling us. Their subcontractors and our foreman are great, and thankfully we don’t see the others every day.
I am startled every day by the kindness and thoughtfulness of these people. They clearly worry for us, want the best for us, and we trust them implicitly. If Alan and Dana, our plumbers recommend a thing, or Brandon & Larry, our electricians, we do it. Because we know that they are exactly right.
Conversely, I am also repeatedly shocked by the unchecked misogyny that I experience, mostly in the higher ups. I call it out because it’s almost…new to me? I work in a male-dominated industry, but also one with lots of HR training. Talking to the trades, it’s clear what happens when that stuff doesn’t exist. Being me, I call it out, call it what it is, and call for it to stop. But it’s also exhausting. It’s literally in my house, and I can’t escape it.
Thankfully not for much longer.
The house is warmer, but still chaos now that the finish work has begun.
The interior walls are finished and painting is underway, the windows are in and siding has begun, and tiling has started.
Our kitchen may be once again delayed due to challenges with the cabinet maker.
So here’s the thing. We’re profoundly grateful we were able to turn our home into a space we can age in, welcome guests to, that holds our dream kitchen and a zillion hand-chosen touches, and are hopeful it will stand another 176 years.
But would we do this again? No, no we wouldn’t.
Are we going to be glad we did in the end, after everyone is gone? Yes.
The reality is that the house will be about 80% finished, and it’s going to be a lot of our hard work to get it the rest of the way on a very tight budget for a while. Still, we see the path forward, and it’s a worthwhile gamble.
We’ve learned a lot. We are older, wiser and definitely broke-er than when we started, but we’re near the finish line of this first phase, and we know that this too shall pass.
So every week we try to do some things to make this process not just hard, but special. We signed the walls and the kids put notes in little glass bottles between the drywall and the framing. My husband put some of his art on the kitchen floor under the new floorboards.
We started watching The Hunger Games movies together as a family in the living room with cozy woodstove fires. I buy little treats for the kids, and make sure there’s plenty of coffee at all times.
And we eat very well. While we were at our rental, we cooked and baked, and then froze some things like Butternut Squash Lasagna, Eli’s enchiladas, meatballs, cookies and soup. Many of these went in part into the freezer and they have been very helpful.
But we also cook from scratch or with just some supplements. We had to give up salad ingredients for bagged salads because it just became a challenge to manage. We’ve become adept at using the tools that we have, and while we’re facing about another month without a usable kitchen, we’re getting along. Tonight I’ll make chicken massaman curry for Eli and I on the hot plate. Tomorrow we’ll make chicken panini with a roaster chicken we bought at Costco, and i’ll turn that into broth overnight for chicken soup with rice on Monday, our busy day.
And while we stocked up at Costco to the tune of $372 Friday night because we needed some things, and grocery and gas prices are rising again, it’s time to really eat down the pantry and freezers. We’ll shop in a very limited manner for the next month or so to try to winnow through our stockpiles. And Costco will last us weeks. Many of the things we use were on sale, like our favorite coffee beans, so we bought 3 bags.
So what are we eating this week?
Saturday: Just Eli and I, chicken massaman curry over rice, salad
Sunday: Costco roaster chicken becomes chicken panini, with roasted broccoli and tater tots
Monday: Chicken soup with rice, with the veggies chopped on Sunday
Tuesday: Just Eli and I, bowl food
Wednesday: Dinner with Mom
Thursday: Just Eli and I, tbd
Friday: Air fryer chicken parmesan, salad, pasta
Little House on the Fairy Hill 