This house is renovating my marriage!?!

I knew a renovation was a stressful event, just like planning a wedding. Before the latter, I kept telling myself, "I'm a professional in this industry, how hard could it be?". Well, two crying breakdowns later, I was on the honeymoon. Never underestimate the emotional component of a major life event.

So you'd think I would have learned a thing or two... Nope. At the start of this project I said to myself, "I used to (kind-of) be a professional in the interiors industry, how hard could it be?". The landscaping- no problem, it even turned out better than expected. Then when the paint color I chose ended up Day-Glo yellow, I put it off to bad luck. More recently, I chose a fabric for the exterior of the kitchen partition. First let me say that I had about 24 hours to run around town and select a fabric (on a Sunday). This eliminated Kyle and I's first choice- Chilewich woven vinyl in a metallic tone, which would have taken weeks... So we settled on ultrasuede- we just had to pick between chocolate and khaki. I vehemently persuaded Kyle that the chocolate was perfect, etc., etc., no question. Later, after spending hours stapling and glueing, we set up the first panel. Imagine the sinking feeling in my stomach as I realized how *awefully dark* it was. Funny how the 4 inch swatch didn't seem like a life-sucking black hole when I'd held it up in that location. So, many apologies later I was back at the fabric store buying the color that Kyle had picked out- which turned out just perfect, as you can tell in the picture. So maybe we won't be house flippers, or at least not with me as the designer ;).

You can also see the beautiful eucalyptus wood fronts on our cabinets- stainless steel bar pulls coming soon. Can we pack our NZ container with this kitchen?? Guess what, just heard Ikea is opening a Wellington location. My prayers have been answered.

Also on the home front, I've been researching building a home in NZ, and have stumbled upon a few interesting links: http://www.earthhomes.com/ and http://www.architecturenz.net/. How small of a rammed earth house can I live in? If lots there are over $200K, we won't have anything left to actually build a house with.