Mom's Surprise Kitchen Makeover

In Mom's last missionary letter to Ethan she wrote, "I wanted to paint the kitchen but that has not happened yet. I hope it does before the summer is over."
Ethan replied, "It sounds like you are trying to get me to paint the kitchen for you ;) Sure I will help."

Early Monday morning, July 23rd, Ethan took Gordon, Sandra, and Naomi to the stake center so they could start their 4 day Trek to Wyoming and back.  When Ethan got home, he emptied the kitchen.

 The week before, Dad had called "the guy" about patching some of the walls and ceiling.  In this picture you can see one of the places that needed patched.

 Ethan, Kristen, and Brittana started scrubbing the walls.  "The guy" came and worked on some spots.
This is a wall before it was scrubbed:

This is after scrubbing all day:

This is the spot by the fan after it was patched and textured, but before it was painted.

The stuff they scrubbed the walls with had a strong smell.  So Ethan looked like a terrorist part of the time.

He had just got his new phone a few days before and the only way he got service inside the house was if the phone was sitting in the kitchen window.

Kristen had a couple days off work, so she stayed to help.  A lot of these pictures came from Kristen's camera, so this is one of the few that was taken of her.

 Tana's gloves had holes, so she put bags over the top of them.

 Tuesday they started painting the trim around the windows and one doorway.  They used caulk to fill in some cracks in the plaster walls.

 Tuesday evening, Kristen brought Brittana over for swimming lessons and fell asleep on the slide.

 Wednesday, Kristen got more paint and then went back to Twin Falls (and Levi).

 After work, Karson went to help.  Also, Cousin Wyatt stopped to help a few times, but we didn't get any pictures of him.

On Thursday, it was a rush to put everything back before the Trekkers came back to town.  They were trying to put it back to normal as much as possible, so they could see how long it would take for Mom to notice any difference.

In this video, (if you listen closely after Naomi comes in) you can hear Mom say, "What the heck!?" because she saw one of the places in the hallway that "the guy" patched.  So when she walks into the kitchen she is looking at the place on the ceiling by the fan that he was also supposed to fix.  So she doesn't see the dark brown trim around the windows.  This video is a little long, but we cut out a full 2 minute chunk of staring at an empty doorway. (you're welcome)

This is what it looks like now above the big window and table.

This is above the water cooler.

Lower Calf Creek Falls is no longer above the shelf.  Mom wants to get a bigger frame for a picture collage of her grandkids to put there.