Jesse Joyner, PhD

If anybody has been wondering where I’ve been for the past three months, I’ve been working 3 jobs: Children’s Pastor, Traveling Juggler, and Kitchen Remodeler.  At last, I am finally down to 2 jobs, the ones I love the most.  The kitchen is done dude.

Now, I did love working on the kitchen (at times), but it was very difficult to “juggle” my schedule to make sure everything got done.  We paid for some services (counters, plumbing, wall removal, drywall) and I did some myself with the generous help of my father (demo, floors, electrical, cabinets, trim, painting, appliances).

The kitchen as we bought the house was a mess.  There was water damage, uneven cabinets, incomplete counters, and no enjoyable “feel” to it.  We put up with that for a year and a half.  Then starting in February, we gutted the kitchen to the studs.  I nearly broke my finger with a miter saw, my wife and baby and I lived with my parents for a month (during the heavy demolition and noise-making), we ate out way too much (thanks, Jason’s Deli), and a few times I worked past midnight (not recommended).

Last night, we had a birthday dinner for Sarah, and the timing was perfect.  I finished the kitchen at about 10am yesterday morning and so the birthday dinner was a great time to have family over and celebrate Sarah and the new kitchen (she was OK with that).  In fact, she is the happiest person of all that it is done and new.  I think Kezzie likes it too!

By the way, in seven years of marriage, this is the first dishwasher we have ever owned.  What a joy to have dinner and then throw those things in the magic washer and find them clean in the morning.  We’ve missed out on so much in this life 🙂

I say “done”, but there is one final piece: the floors.  We got reclaimed heart pine flooring from Caravatti’s and installed it ourselves (the same mill stamp on the bottom of this reclaimed wood matches the mill stamp on the original wood in the rest of the house).  We are having the floors sanded and refinished next week so that we will have new floors by Friday.  So try to overlook the floors in the pictures.

The builder in me wants to say, “what’s next?”, but I think I’ll take a break from large home projects for now 🙂

Thank you Jesus, for a wife, a baby, a roof, and a kitchen!