About a month ago, we discovered that our kitchen counter needs to be replaced. Well, technically it needed to be replaced when we moved into the house, but we’ve managed to blissfully ignore that fact for a few years now and focus on the things we love about our kitchen instead.

But a month ago, we discovered that the countertop was rotting away and the leaking faucet couldn’t be fixed until we replaced the whole thing. We dutifully went to Home Depot and picked out the least ugly countertops they had in stock and brought them home. We even splurged and bought a shiny new faucet, just for fun. Why not spoil ourselves?

My cousin, owner of Carpentry Kings, brought the new countertops down to the house and he started to pull out everything from the cabinet under the sink so that he could install the new countertop. Brent is the greatest. ❤

He pulled out the plastic grocery bags. He pulled out a box of dishwasher detergent. He pulled out a second box of dishwasher detergent from behind that first one. Huh. Given that our dishwasher has been broken since Thanksgiving weekend, we have a lot of useless detergent. He pulled out the steel wool scrubby thingys that we love. He pulled out a chunk of my cabinet floor.

Uhhhh….

“Tami?” Very few people are allowed to call me Tami. Only people who knew me before 1999. And not even all of those people – only the people I still like. And I can revoke that privilege anytime I want.

“Yes Brent?”

“Your cabinet is completely rotted through.”

And handful by handful, piece by piece, he threw my entire kitchen cabinet in a big, black garbage bag.

Thanks, Brent. By the way, you can call me Tamara now.

So instead of having a lovely new countertop with amazing coffee camouflaging superpowers, I was left with my dingy old stained countertop and a sink with no cabinet underneath.

Now, I know we could make do. As I mentioned above, my husband and I have been gifted with the ability to completely ignore things that need repair. But it just seemed to us that we really should just fix it. Put a new cabinet in, get a new countertop. Butcher block, maybe. And if we are going to replace the cabinets under the sink, we should do the ones above too. And if we do the ones on the west side of the kitchen, we should do the ones on the east side to match. And while we’re doing the cabinets, maybe we should move the oven over to the outside wall and extend then the cabinets and counter all the way across the kitchen and around to the fridge. And hey – if we move those cabinets over, maybe we should just go ahead and punch a big hole in the wall between the kitchen and the living room so we have a cute little breakfast bar. I mean, it only makes sense, right?

And so, quite unexpectedly, we find ourselves waiting for Ikea to deliver our new kitchen. Brent is going to make it look beautiful, because that’s what he does. That’s why he is still on the list of people who can call me Tami.