I am a little overly-pleased with my Christmas Eve badassery.

But now I have a problem. I resent my $12 IKEA curtains.

When we first moved into this house 10 years ago, our kitchen was a minor disaster. Formica and particleboard cabinets. Dull off-white paint on the walls. A flickering fluorescent light fixture. Stairs covered in drab gray paint. No countertops to speak of. A refrigerator in the middle of the frickin’ room. Oh, and the dirt. 70 years worth of dirt, everywhere.

We soon learned I was pregnant, resulting in the famous declaration “No pregnant wife – and no child – of mine will be eating in this kitchen.”

And thus we began the 5 year 7 year 10 year renovation.

I’d be hard pressed to say if the low point was the month we went without a working stove and microwave, or the Christmas Eve when Saint Paul tried so worked himself into full body cabinet-hanging, floor-sanding exhaustion… followed by a bad case of the flu… followed by me hauling 125 lbs of This End Up tables down flights of stairs to set up for the holiday dinner while simultaneously cooking for 18 people and taking care of two toddlers.

Anyway.

With lots of sweat equity, major purchases stretched over the years, and strategic help by pros, 10 years later we loooove our small kitchen.

We had painted it a cheery yellow to match our screamingly cheerful dining room. And over time, it got… old. The Restoration Hardware drawer pulls broke. My tastes veered from the more traditional to the more eclectic. And it was time for a change.

Note to self: don’t take before pictures while the room is already in the process of being ripped apart.

I had never done a damn thing with the windows.

But inspiration grabbed me at IKEA when I fell in love with a simple piece of wire and clips.  And fabric.  And tape that got me over my fear of crafts. And scissors my son somehow hasn’t stolen from me yet.

Behold the object of my resentment, the $12(ish) curtains.

And yeah. You’re going to have to excuse the counter clutter. I fed a small horde yesterday.

I’m… astounded. We’ve put a lot of work into that kitchen, starting with selecting the fruit crate labels you see over the windows (wonderful momentos of a pre-child trip to San Francisco, when I was mysteriously exhausted, went to sleep at 8 every night and figured out a week later that I was pregnant). Because we did it ourselves and were complete novices, selecting and configuring cabinets took us, like, forever. Deciding on a counter surface was tortuous, because we knew we’d have it for a reaaaaaaallllllllly long time. All of that work, and boom $12 curtains (and a $50 cat!) completely transform the space.

Oh the power of paint and new hardware and some cheap fabric. Lesson learned. Yeah, we hung curtains in the living room yesterday. And I’m even considering (gasp!) layering in some matchstick-bamboo shades.

It may take me 10 years. But eventually, I catch on.