China made my kitchen blue. Ish.

China. It is really far away. It takes a long time to get there, and ironically not the same time to get back, which I know makes sense to some people, but always completely confuses me, and becomes just one of those things I have to accept, like daylight savings. Huz has been taking teaching trips to China periodically since Oct. 2010, when I accompanied him and found out just how far away China happens to be. Well, in April, he took what I hope to be his last China trip for a while. I am not a good single parent. When Huz is gone dinner is usually up to the kids, cereal is fine by me. We watch bad movies (okay, well, we tried to do this but the movie was so very bad that God suggested we turn it off by zapping the power for a few seconds, and after that happened, we realized the big guy was watching out for us. New Moon from the Twilight series was, I believe, melting our brains) and American Idol. My legs don't get shaved. Which, I realize doesn't necessarily make me a bad parent, but when you have hogs, it is probably sanity saving to have some standards. (Unlike daylight savings, that makes sense to me).
The other thing that happens when Huz goes off somewhere is I do some sort of home improvement project. This started early in our marriage when I realized "off to work for the day" wasn't  a long enough "off somewhere" to knock out a wall and put in french doors. He kind of freaked out about the hole in the wall when he got home. Now, I must point out that it is completely unnecessary to wait for him to leave anymore before I go sledgehammering stuff, because several home remodelings later, he has learned to say "Wow, the wall is missing. Looks great!" Pay attention, young ones, this is what makes marriage work. But, when he leaves and I no longer have to make dinner, shave my legs, or go to bed, I have a perfect opportunity to completely wreck something, and then put it back together before he walks in the door. Now, what with occasionally trying to be a professional in a job, and constantly taking care of a whole passel of critters, I sometimes don't get around to making plans. So, it happened that I found myself on Wednesday night, in the kitchen doing battle with flying ant things that presented themselves en masse- thousands of the suckers making their way between the window and the trim - on the INSIDE. Ew. I have found Simple Green to be rather effective in swift insect death- which makes me wonder about its ingredients...my other enviro-cleaners don't have that result- and then I just have to mop up the billion bodies. Well, while I was doing this, it occurred to me : Why don't I paint the trim around this window? See, when we did the addition and renovation in 2007-2008, I didn't completely finish the kitchen before we moved into it- the disadvantage of living in your home while you renovate, and doing all the finish work yourself. So, there was trim work left undone. And, we lived with it. I even liked my kitchen. But, it always bugged me. "Gotta get back to that!"
So, I conceived of the notion to simply do the top coats on the primed window trim over the sink. Which, by the next morning had morphed into a trip to the lumber yard to purchase what I still needed for the finish work on the whole kitchen. To be fair, it didn't need much, I have a lot of lumber still around, some of it I have already put through the router and the salvaged old trim, which I believe is walnut, and heavy and so very dense. So I got Middlest to haul the air compressor out of the basement when she returned from school, and my nail gun, miter saw and I got to work. The trim work went up in spare moments over the next day or two, and by that time the project had enlarged to painting the kitchen. It had been a neutral creamy white/yellow, but I was ready to move on.
So, after Pony Club, a trip through town to collect a gallon of "Sea Sprite". I guess one of the advantages of re-doing so many houses over the last 17 years is paint choosing is no longer a  mystery or effort. I can go in, pick out a square, and say  "That's it!" buy it, and I'm right.
So, at 9 pm, the night before Huz is to return from China, I started painting the kitchen. My mom says we work best under pressure.

So, Youngest took my picture on top of the fridge preparing to paint the walls. I didn't move the fridge, as I normally would've, as my back is not up to moving large appliances. So, secret, the wall behind the fridge, down low where I couldn't reach- it isn't painted "Sea Sprite".

I put two coats on the walls, and several on the trim and then, all that was left was to put the kitchen to rights before collecting Huz.

The finished kitchen. Okay, maybe I should've taken the time to organize the shelving below the island, but this is exactly how it would look one child's cooking project later, soooo.....

The dominant feature in the kitchen is the island, made by my dad and me a few years back. I blogged about the island a year or so ago. My kitchen is an exercise in ingenuity. When we did the renovation and the addition to the house, it was on a budget. Not the kind of budget you read about in the magazines, but my kind of budget. So, when the builder learned I wanted to keep the kitchen simple and inexpensive, he added 16k. to the estimate. I giggled, and said, no... my kitchen will be less than $1000. He didn't think it could be done, but by that time, he was interested to see what I would do.

Kendra and I built all the shelving- no cabinets, Dad and I built the island, my sister contributed the sink from her old farmhouse, I made the counter tops, painted the dinged up dark wood floor, and voici.

I ask you, with a kitchen that has a fireplace and this painting of the house (prior to our stewardship) over the mantle, how could I go wrong? My kitchen!

And, when Huz got home from China? "Wow, the kitchen is....blue? ish? Looks Great! And, we have trim! Wow!"

I'll admit, my "you went on a business trip re-dos" might be a passive/aggressive way to make him afraid of leaving for more than a day, but at least he sticks to the script.