And further more...: Stuff to say. Don't wanna talk.

So, we are 12 years into the 5-year renovation plan we had for this old house when we bought it. Granted, many projects came up in the meantime and kinda changed the plan along the way.

I'm super stoked to be getting a new open concept living space and fabulous kitchen, complete with real flooring. This will finalize the renovation of the entire main floor since we moved in. And by finalize, I don't mean we are done. I simply mean every room will have been renovated. I already have plans for a bedroom makeover swirling in my head. After all, it has been 12 years since it was done.

Currently I sit here in my little office corner viewing the open space with wires hanging out the walls where plugs and switches used to be and plumbing parts poking out, waiting to be rerouted to their new locations.

Removing the walls and flooring has exposed a half dozen different patterns of flooring and a variety of wallpapers, some of which have been painted right over top of. Twice. I think I will actually gain a few square feet of living space by the time the walls are peeled back to the 2x4 studs - layers of wallpaper, 2 layers of wall panelling on top of drywall, on top of at least one layer of donnacona fibreboard. (I had to google 'donnacona' because the word sounds sort of stupid to me. There's a city in Quebec by this name, so I can only assume production of this fibreboard originated there. But that's only an assumption.)

I can't help but imagine the transformations this place has seen over the years. Opening the walls exposed previous window frames in the wall between the master bedroom and living room - further confirming what we had observed in a previous renovation - the back half of the house is actually an addition. There are various fill-ins in the floor and framed-in doors and windows in the walls that indicate there have been many substantial changes. There is even an old electrical panel box, highly illegally buried in the end wall. And yes it has live wires running into and out of it. So glad I sleep with an electrician who can deal with issues like this.

One of those changes is our reno from nearly two years ago - turning the large bathroom with a lot of wasted space into a smaller nicer one, giving space to create a fabulous walk-in pantry off the kitchen.

I am so in love with my pantry, but it has always felt a bit temporary to me with its unfinished floor and collection of items that don't belong in a pantry - the mop and pail, a shelf of cleaners and bug sprays, a box of empty wine bottles and pop cans awaiting recycling etc. Things that will have their own special cupboards and closets in my new kitchen. Meanwhile there were a couple of cupboards full of food items in the kitchen waiting for the mop and Raid to move out of the pantry so they could move into their rightful space.

As I was emptying out the food and spice cupboards I was refreshed in my admiration of people who keep well-stocked cupboards. My sister, for example, always has at least 2 extra bottles of ketchup on hand, 6 boxes of cereal and enough soup to last through a famine. I've never been like that. I'm just way to disorganized to keep stuff cycled and fresh on the shelves. And emptying out my kitchen has shown me just how bad it is.

The expired food I threw into black trash bags is mind boggling. Popcorn from 2013. Seriously. We just aren't popcorn eaters. Boxes of Breton crackers. Whatever possessed me to buy a 6-pack of crackers from Costco for Christmas 2015? One box tends to go stale before it gets eaten.

I have enough dry pasta to open a soup kitchen. Most of it is in sealed plastic packaging. I don't think it goes bad. We will eventually eat it. I think. Many of these plastic packages of pasta were still inside plastic grocery bags sitting in the cupboard, where you couldn't easily see what was in them. Probably exactly why I kept buying more. Upon emptying the grocery bags, among the packs of linguine and spaghettini I found two new eyeliner pencils I had purchased a couple of months ago at Superstore, then spent a ridiculous amount of time searching for when I got home. I gave them up for lost - assuming someone else got free eyeliner that I left on the grocery counter while packing my noodles into 5cent bags. Score!

My intention was to make a Facebook status update indicating I found the missing eyeliner. Somehow a blog oozed out. Sometimes I just have stuff to say but don't wanna talk.