If you missed them, here are Parts I and II of the saga. To recap, we moved into our house in 2008, and were inspired from the get-go by our tiny but lovely kitchen from our first apartment as a married couple when we lived briefly on Long Island.

Little by little, I pulled the kitchen apart and put it back together again, with help from my family. And I painted. Again. And again. And again.

At this point, the kitchen wasn’t getting a lot better without tearing everything out and starting over, but I kept pushing. I trimmed my open shelving out with 1x pieces of wood I had lying around to prevent dishes from being pulled out accidentally, and to make the edges look beefier. I made matching curtains for all the windows using fabric from Joel Dewberry’s Heirloom line called Opal in Dandelion. It’s no longer in stock,  but I mention it because the fabric matches the kitchen perfectly, and I like all the words: Heirloom, Opal, Dandelion. Our house got featured on Design Mom in March of 2014, which was fun, and helped me up my photography game. But I have trouble leaving well enough alone. I painted it twice more, once cream, which I hated, and then back to yellow again, and that is the color it will stay. For now. (For those of you keeping track, those were colors #4 and #5).

This yellow is the closest it’s ever been to that first apartment kitchen’s color. I would post pictures of these in between shades, but it’s sort of embarrassing. The last two colors are so close to the color above, you can’t really tell the difference in photos. I think it was cream in the photo below, but I just can’t be sure.You know how paint is a little lighter before it dries? When I was painting over the ill-conceived cream color, the yellow I replaced it with was EXACTLY the same color as the cream paint when it was wet. Which means I could not tell what I had painted and what I hadn’t with any certainty until it dried. That is a perfectionist’s nightmare.

In 2016, a stressful event in my life brought me back to the kitchen for One. Last. Thing. I had always wanted to tear down the soffit on the wall above the sink, but was afraid of what was underneath. Finally, whatever was holding me back was overcome by my need to rip something apart. It was just as satisfying as I’d hoped. There were enormous holes to patch, some wiring to move, and the open spaces I’d been hoping to find. If at any point you found yourself wondering, does she use proper safety equipment when wielding power tools? The answer is yes, yes I do.

I got dust everywhere. But when I was done, it looked great. I think I did it for the cost of one bucket of patching compound, and a couple of pieces of hardware to hold the wiring in place.For the light above the sink, I used a piece of chain I already had, an Ikea cord with a light socket I had lying around, and a light cage I found at Lowe’s. I purchased Edison bulbs for the fixture I’d made. I converted the former light box’s wiring into a plug so that it would work with the Ikea cord, which is plug-in style rather than hardwired.

See the green chair behind Two and under baby Six at the right of the fridge below? It used to be my Grandma’s. I got a white replica, which is visible in top photo above. But then, I discovered the original was languishing on a back porch at the family homestead in Pennsylvania, and they let me have it! No one knows for sure how old it is, but it is Very Old. And after a good cleaning, it is almost as good as new.Since the back door is off the kitchen, it’s the first room we see when we get home, and the last room when we leave.This room has always been one of my favorites in the house. I mentioned the way the light comes in every morning between 9 and 11 a.m.; it glows. After 10 years of living here, that hasn’t gotten old.

So much of our family life happens here. With seven kids, there is always someone who’s hungry. (Below, it’s Six). It’s where we prepare, and then wait for, cake, pizza, applesauce, and mac and cheese. The kids make breakfast, lunch, (if by lunch, you mean cake. But they do make themselves lunch, too)and sometimes, dinner. (One makes a mean Southern Fried Chicken).And plenty of dessert. We do hair in the kitchen. School. Nail painting. There’s potty training. Practice makeup for dance competitions. (And applying face paint to those who are feeling left out)It’s right next to the laundry room, which is getting action to the tune of 2-3 loads a day. When I was looking through kitchen photos for this series, I was surprised by the number of pics that contained a full laundry basket somewhere in the background. It was kind of a (depressing?) theme.

There are kitchen sink baths. And dishes. Endless dishes. Power poses we photographed and sent the Chaplain while he was at a stressful, short-lived job last year.Even though there is almost nowhere to sit, so many of my kitchen pics are of us just hanging out in there. We have dance parties in this room nearly every day. And there are the multiple times each day when I go there to get away and someone follows me.I’ll leave you with this. It’s what it looks like when the dishes are done, which is never. This is the view that keeps bringing us all back into this room, all day, in every season, even when we aren’t hungry. Our living room is nice, but if we’re being honest, the kitchen is our real living room.Remember my coworker back in Part I? Whose mother made him paint five times for the right yellow? I may have outdone her. However, I must say, I did all my painting myself.