It's a high stress life

Sept 2013-Sept 2014 was all travel all the time. It was an insane amount of travel. Amost all international. I hated it. I was lonely and overworked.

Feb 2015 my brother told me he had been diagnosed with cancer. Feb 2015-May 2016 was traveling to take care of him, doing tasks for him long distance, dealing with his death, being the executrix for his estate, and building a house to hold the family furniture he would give me when he died. The travel to take care of him was Hugely Stressful (a vast understatement. I ended up buying and wearing a TENS just for those visits)

My brother's estate is mostly done except for the paperwork. I have some checks to write, some paperwork to fill out. Documentation. A few hours, and then it is mostly maintenance. I should be able to close the estate entirely in nine months.

But the house building is going gangbusters. We have a roof, drywall, painted drywall, cases, and bases. There are of course issues (a broken window in the master bath, crunshed drainage tubes in the driveway, stuff like that. They will fix it.), but overall it looks really lovely. We are thrilled with the look of the house, with the insulation the builder talked us into, with the layout and design. The windows provide a huge amount of indirect light. I really love that.

T and I spent the past weekend trying desperately to choose ALL OF THE LIGHT FIXTURES. Count the light fixtures in your house. Every stupid light, inside and out. Every fan. ALL OF THEM. It was crazy.

And this past week? Together we spent Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday and Monday picking floors, shower tiles, lighting fixtures, potential wrong paint color and more. Friday I spent working on the light fixtures on my own.

T and I are not enjoying this process. He thinks that we have had a stressful couple of years. He thinks that we haven't had a chance to come "down" from the insanity. He suspects other people would actually enjoy this choosing-stuff-for-new-house. We  just want it DONE.

*sigh*

a light and a pot rack -- help?

So we have an island in the kitchen. At our request, they put in extra support above it so we can hang a pot rack. There is an electrical fixture there.

Our builder suggested a pot rack with lights built into it. I researched those. Either they are insanely expensive (anything more than $150 is insanely expensive) or they are hideous. Often both. The reasonable-looking pot rack with lights that shows up the most often has a max weight limiit of 30lb, which we could not live with.

So we bought a cheap pot rack that I rather liked, no light. Key element I'm dubious about is that it will only hold up to 40lbs of pans. But it is cheap enough that if I end up buying another I won't have to beat myself up too badly.

No, I have not actually weighed my pans. Yet. I will!

Yes, the light fixture is DIRECTLY above the island, which is also where the pot rack will hang. T doesn't want to have a flat-to-ceiling light, figuring that the pans will entirely block it. Or cause weird shadows.

On one pot rack review, they talked about threading lights through the pot rack. I suspect we need to go that route. Hanging lights that can drop down through the pans? I have lovely (well used) all-clad stainless pans to hang on the pot rack. The rest of the room is white, dark wood tile floors, pale wood cabinets. I'd like lights that will thread through the pot rack, not cast pot-shaped shadows on my island and will not break on an evil thought. *shiver* Ugh, glass shards all over the food...

Wanna help search?