With one week left to go before we wrap up Month SIX of house renovations, it’s time for another update.

The Good News: I have a functional* kitchen again! All the work here is done, minus the backsplash which is going in the first week of June, and the filling in of nail holes on trim, which, let’s face it – may take years to complete. But who cares; I have places to put things and cook things. And for a wee bit, I even had a place to clean things, but I’ll explain more about that (and the above *) here soon.

The Not So Good News: it would appear that some serious gremlins have set up camp between us and the finish line of this project, starting with both my (brand new) dryer and (not new) dishwasher deciding to go wonky on me.

We did a service call on the dryer last week only to discover that its internal thermostat is off (there was an odd charred smell one Saturday when I did approximately seven loads that lead to us questioning its functionality) and needs to be replaced. The machine is obviously still under warranty which is great, but the tech told me I probably shouldn’t be using it until the part gets switched out which is clearly batshit crazy because seven people make a lot of laundry in half a day, much less however many full days it will take to wait on this part (my goodness, my sentences get long and twisty when I’m agitated). I may or may not be heeding the advice.

The dishwasher, our * on a fully functioning kitchen, is still a mystery waiting to be solved. It worked fine for the first week and half-ish that it was back in the new space, but now the last couple days an odd film is showing up on half the stuff in there after running a load. WTAF and AYFKM? I just want to use real dishes again, but again – seven people. That’s a crap ton of loads by hand until we can get this figured out, too.

The final gremlin, however, is the most perplexing because we still don’t have an end date in sight for our complete project. There are a few major pieces of the basement project that aren’t done and we’ve been given no clear indication of when they might get done, which means continued limbo of not being able to use our whole house, not being able to clean the massive layers of dirt and grime, and not being able to move everything back to where it should be so we’re not living amidst piles and chaos as we’ve been for SIX FREAKING MONTHS now.

Can you tell I’m over it? Can you tell that these continued hiccups are breaking me? I just want everything to settle. I just want things to function properly. I just want to do deal with the chaos and enjoyment of summer with my kids and not be stuck trying to piece together remaining house projects. I just want to never ever again do any sort of house project of any kind in any way, shape, or form, because this is too much. I just want my brain to write short sentences again.