Before and after

I didn't do any housework yesterday so I'm a bit backed up.  It rained all day and I just had zero motivation.  Today, however, I'm rebounding so I'll give you a little before and after.  I must preface these pictures with this:  Hubs and I are building our home from scratch with cash and we're a one income household and we sit right on the poverty line of annual income.  We're pretty thrifty and have very little debt (grrrr...I wish we had NO debt) so we don't feel poor but these pictures probably paint a very different picture to plenty of other people who live more "normal" lives.

Kitchen with a day and a half worth of mess:

This is the skeleton of our future kitchen cabinets and counters which are, for now, covered in contact paper.  I used one entire role that was $5.00 or maybe it $5 and some change...I don't remember.  Not the prettiest, but functional.  Back to the mess, scary, I know.

After:

I didn't notice that water bottle on the floor until I added the picture to blogger, but it's put away now.  The dishwasher is full and running and I have a little better than a half of a load left in the sink but things are looking a whole lot better.  Since I don't have cabinet drawers and doors, I've covered a couple of the holes with a dish towel and a small embroidered table cloth that used to belong to my grandma.  It's better looking than the junk behind the towels.  I also don't have a pantry right now but have plans to add doors to a book case that's just out of sight and to the right of the dishwasher.  I use it to hold my everyday dishes for now and keep the food on the temporary open shelves and lower cabinets.

Next up, the stove. 
Before:

Aaahhhhh!  Of coarse, it isn't original to the house being that the house is less than a year old and the stove is from the fifties.  It's a shame any time it gets this messy because it is such a cool looking stove.  We bought it for $70 and hubs refurbished it with new wiring, burners and insulation as well as a good scrubbing.  Eventually, we'll have a half wall behind the stove (right now a love seat backs right up to it but don't worry, it's not a fire hazard) and we'll build lower cabinets on either side.  For now, I have a small white credenza on one side that is being used for food storage and a small white sewing table on the other side, so I do have some extra works space around it, but I actually do ALL of my cooking and prep work right on the stove.  It's HUGE!  It has a lot of space in the center between the burners.

After:

Pretty stove, huh?  The door on the right is the oven and all the others are drawers, so there's lots of storage for my cookware and bakeware.  (The living area's a mess too, but I'll do a quick touch up as soon as I'm done here.)

Last, but not least, the table.
Before:

We're a family of seven and the table comfortably seats everyone for now (baby goes in the high chair.)  There's a bench next to the window that three kids can and often do sit at and four chairs, a couple of which are strewn about the house, sigh.  I'd love to paint it white and paint all the chairs and bench a soft accent color or strip them down to bare wood.  Put that on the to do list too.

After:

Bad picture, but I'm in a hurry.  Sorry.  It's clean and two year old is having a little snack.  I still need to round up the other chairs though.

In other news, hubs and I (by far, mostly hubs) finished the electric fence for the goats and we even bought a calf from one of the neighbors the other day and tossed him in with the goats too.  Yipee!  I didn't think that would happen this year.  We've experienced a lot of losses with the chicks (seven so far) and have twelve left...probably all roosters.  Oh well, Saturday is chick days at one of the local farm stores so we're going to get a half a dozen or so more then.  The laying hens laying strike is over and production is better than ever because the younger hens have also started laying.  We now get 10 to 15 eggs a day!  We love eggs!

There's  a mole in my garden ransacking the place.  It's tearing right through my turnips and radishes that were looking so good!  Gotta dig through the barn and find the mole trap.

Back to work I go!

Have a good one!