AT LONG LAST...

I have finally had a moment to get on here to post! What a week it has been since getting home from our trip to Fort Myers Beach for my cousin Brian's wedding to his new bride, Kara. I'll spare you most of the details, mainly because I'm finally a little less furious and don't really feel like getting myself all worked up again. Let's just say that the installation of the granite countertops, which our friend, who is our realtor, promised to supervise (and who decided that oversight, not to mention the promise he made to us, wasn't necessary and therefore wasn't in our home with these strangers for most of the day), didn't go so well.

We came home from our lovely family vacation to find bottles of Drano and Windex - which had been under the sink - out on the kitchen floor where Caroline made a beeline for them, chunks of drywall missing behind the backsplash that needed to be spackled and repainted, our plumbing disconnected so that when we turned the water on we had floods in not only the crawlspace under the kitchen but also under our sink, and our pantry, and every shelf in the pantry cabinet - which is adjacent to the counters - collapsed and in need of clean-up. We also found the old backsplash out on our deck and the old sink in our garage, apparently left for us to dispose of. Needless to say, it was not a happy scene at our house that night and in the days after.

People often talk about feeling violated when they have had a break-in or after being pick-pocketed or something. That's exactly how I felt upon seeing my kitchen. We had not contracted this work - our realtor had done this on our behalf. People I didn't know were in my home while I was not, and took something that I have loved for almost 5 years - our very first house, the place we brought our daughter home to for the first time - and tore it apart. While our realtor thought he could trust these people - as he had done business with them many times before, and whose children his children often play with - they clearly didn't hold as much value in this place as we do. The realtor has since apologized, and knows that his relationship with the contractor, as well as us, will never be the same.

Fortunately, my father is quite adept at lots of things related to home maintanence, and he helped us to put our little house back together again. He and Steve spackled and painted, cleared out and cleaned up the debris, and things are back to normal again. My Mom and Aunt Karen helped me to reconstruct the pantry while I chased Caroline and worked on packing the other parts of our house. We got everything fixed and ready for the dual baby shower I hosted this past Friday for my good friends Kristy and Michelle, who are due next month - just a week apart! While my trust in some people is still somewhat broken, my home is not, and should be ready to put on the market this week. I'll be posting next about our trip, but I wanted to share why I've been so out of the loop for the past few days...