DIY Disaster

So, I haven't posted in a while.  There are no less than a dozen reasons why.  One of them is that Ryan and I managed to find ourselves in the middle of a DIY disaster.  We thought we'd take on a little project in our kitchen.  It started when I declared that we were going to replace the countertops.  I did this after spending no less than 4 hours in the kitchen one day when the old tiles kept popping off.  I looked at my husband and kindly explained that I was spending WAY too much time in that kitchen to be dealing with disappearing tiles.  He agreed.  17 years of marriage have made him a very wise man.
The picture above is one of the "before" shots.  Those white tiles on top of the cream cabinets are gone now.  We replaced them with some lovely floor tiles.  (Don't ask, it was the best overall option. And actually, we didn't replace them, we paid Joseph the plumber to replace them.)  The countertops looked really nice.  So nice, that we decided we wanted to plunge into re-painting the cabinets.  Ourselves.  Oh my word, what a nightmare!  We are no strangers to painting.  In America.  We have promised ourselves that we will never again paint in Nigeria.  Ever.  Labor is too cheap and time is too precious to try that again.
First of all, it took Ryan 3 trips to the paint store to even figure out how to navigate the basics here.  Then, he had to figure out where to buy paintbrushes and rollers, because they don't sell those in the paint store. We gave up on paint trays when none of the hardware professionals had any idea what Ryan was talking about.  Ryan brought home the brushes and rollers and we laughed because they were horrid.  But he'd gone to many stores and they all sold the exact same ones.  They were our only option, so we set to work.    It took about 5 strokes for us to realize that we were in trouble.  Ryan looked at me and said, "I wouldn't give this paintbrush to a volunteer to paint a VBS craft with."
Anyway, we persevered through the first coat and began the second and realized that we were totally in over our heads.  36 hours, and a huge mess later, he called in 3 different painters, got quotes on the whole house, and now we've been rescued from ourselves.  It's amazing, Ryan spent 3 weeks trying to get paint for our house only to be told that the colors we wanted weren't available.  The man we're using came for an hour, took our requests and money and came back the next morning with everything we needed.  All the Nigerians keep telling us that everything here revolves around who you know and we're beginning to believe it.  We know Johnny.  He knows paint.  He goes to the same shop Ryan had visited 3 times and comes out with gallons of paint that Ryan was unable to acquire.  Maddening!
Now, we're camping out on the floor of a vacant house on our compound.  Because the paint here smells so yucky that we couldn't sleep in our home.  Not to mention, 5 kids + wet paint = bad news.  So, we're schooling and sleeping in one house, cooking and eating in another.  It's fun, you should try it.
But seriously, I am encouraged.  We've had an electrician in all week as well and it's beginning to seem more personal, more like it's our house.  Things that bothered us are being updated.  And, I am seeing an end in sight.  If we could just get the nice people in Lagos to let us have our crate, we'd really be able to make it ours.  But, for today, I'll take some fresh paint, functional lighting, and fresh countertops.