Roads to Joy

These days, as we’ve been dealing with all the ramifications of major kitchen renovation, we’ve been veering between delight and despair. Sometimes you have to catch the smallest possible unit of hope, in these times, and that’s what I’m trying to do just now as I contemplate the demolished, flattened and neatly stacked set of erstwhile cupboards ready for their trip to the Household Waste Recycling Centre.

A project composed of many smaller efforts, this renovation was always going to be a major imposition, but perhaps we hadn’t realised how challenging it would be. We always thought we had safety retreats worked out, but now that we find ourselves mostly encamped upstairs with a camping stove, a microwave and a smoothie-maker, it’s a different story.

We co-existed with the dust of the major structural project, which involved removing an ancient granite supporting wall (the stones of which are piled in the top left-hand corner of the final image of the gallery above), with some aplomb. Perhaps that was because of the plastic barriers that allowed us to continue to use the old kitchen facilities while the wall came down. So far, so clever.

But when, eventually, it came time for the kitchen to come out, we began to lose heart. Our plans for continued life felt inconsequential, ineffective, against the barrage of inconvenience. We tried to get away in our vintage Harry Hymermobile, but the endless rain and dreich of a sodden Wig Bay soon brought us home again, where our spirits sank as so little seemed to have been accomplished in our absence. Well, the floor was lovely, but the delivery of the new components seemed to cover every square centimeter of space, so that nothing seemed available to be worked on.

As a dear friend cautioned us, however, the preparation works seem to take forever, but when things start to go together, they move much faster. So, perhaps, it’s seeming today, almost as if we’ve turned a corner into a perspective of a light-filled horizon. Or maybe it’s just that I got off my backside earlier this morning and demolished the carelessly stacked cupboards that had been such a depressogenic presence at our back door.

But no, with the new cabinets being arranged today for final placement on the beautifully laid floor, so that electricity and plumbing can be properly configured, with the walls above where the new backboards will be placed receiving a smooth plaster finish, and with the tradesfolk on deck ready to complete their work, it feels like the schedule for completion of the project by Easter might just be a possibility. There are still deadlines to hit, milestones to conquer, and delays that might occur to set us back, of course. It feels though, as if we could be entering the last weeks of the project.

And not a moment too soon, as the washing machine, the upstairs shower, and our patience, are all pretty much out of service. With gritted teeth, but a fair amount of hope, we can grasp the sentiment that things might, finally, come together and we can tidy the house again, reconfiguring to receive welcome guests. The reduction in stress will be so welcome! Until then, we must welcome whatever respite we can find, grasping speckles of flashing gold from the miasma of the muddy water swirling around what was once a kitchen.

There are strange things done, in the midnight sun, by the men who moil for gold. As Robert Service began his immortal ‘Cremation of Sam McGee’ poem, so we join the ranks of the miners of hope.