Kitchen Re-Do

Being home from vacation means one thing in our house: kitchen renovations. This is the only major renovation we decided to tackle this year, and it's one that really isn't even all that major. When we moved in to our house almost 4 years ago, we decided to make the kitchen palatable by buying a new dishwasher, painting all the cabinets, and making some of the cabinets open. We painted the walls, laid new flooring, and received a beautiful butcher block as a gift. It was good enough for us to make do with our ancient (and tiny) oven, our gas range with only three working burners, our hood that is really nothing more than a giant holder for one tiny light bulb, and our ugly old counter tops that ALMOST hide all the coffee drips my husband is incapable of seeing/leaving on them.
So over the past couple of months, we've purchased a new oven/range, picked out counter tops, bought a new sink and faucet, and dreamed about how awesome everything will be when it's done. We've squirreled all the new stuff away in the basement and visited it periodically, mentally picturing it installed and working. We're talked about the new row of cabinets in the dead space above our pre-existing ones and pictured the ease with which the frosted glass will hide all of the stuff we never had room for before. The dreaming has been awesome.
Today we begin the process. My ridiculously capable brother-in-law will be coming over to start things off. It may be a couple of weeks before it's all done, but I have more patience now than I used to. I feel surprisingly serene and peaceful about the whole thing.