KENNEBUNK, Maine — When Maureen and Mike McEnaney found the perfect West Kennebunk home to raise their four children in nearly 10 years ago, they both agreed on one thing: the kitchen had to go.
“It was dark green, and the cabinets were handmade, so they didn’t match up, the doors sagged or had fallen off. It was awful,” said Maureen McEnaney. “The drawers rubbed so we had little piles of sawdust everywhere. If you wanted to use a bowl you had to rinse it out because it was full of sawdust.”
Ten years later, the kitchen remodel still had not made it to the top of the list, and all of the McEnaney’s energy shifted to a much more dire issue; Maureen’s battle with a very aggressive form of colon cancer.
Diagnosed in 2014 with stage 3 colon cancer, McEnaney underwent 12 rounds of chemotherapy.
“As far as I was concerned, I thought I’d be cancer free at that point,” she said. But that wasn’t the case. More tumors appeared in her abdomen last winter, and last March she underwent a full hysterectomy and another round of chemotherapy. Again, her positive attitude kept McEnaney moving forward, and hopeful that cancer was behind her.
“I thought I was fine, but then it came back again, and this time my doctors basically said there was nothing more they could do except chemotherapy. That would keep me going for a while, but they were preparing me for the worst,” McEnaney said.
McEnaney said this was around Thanksgiving 2015, and the family was feeling rocked by the latest diagnosis. Once again, the mom of four rallied her can-do attitude and told them everything was going to be ok.
“I felt sorry for myself for a little bit, but then I started to do some research and I found this very specialized surgery, and I brought it to my doctor,” Maureen McEneney said. “I told him I thought I would be a really good candidate for it, and he agreed.”
On March 11, McEnaney underwent Cytoreductive surgery with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. The procedure involves removing all of the visible tumors, and then delivering heated chemotherapy drugs to any area that may have remaining cancer cells.
As soon as she was out the door headed to Boston on March 11, the “McEnaney Kitchen Surprise” crew arrived to gift the family with a fully remodeled kitchen.
“This is something they desperately needed for years, but they have put it off, because with four kids, something always comes up. Their kids always came first,” said Laura Snyder Smith, friend of the family and one of the coordinators of the kitchen surprise. “We wanted to do something to show Maureen how much we love her, and this was the perfect way to do that.”
The work took place over one weekend, but the planning began in December with everyone sworn to secrecy. McEnaney’s husband, Mike, was the only family member in on the surprise, and family friend and project coordinator Tami York said he snuck around taking measurements in the kitchen when his wife and children weren’t looking.
“Mike and Maureen are such good people, and they’ve really been dealt a raw hand,” York said. “Maureen hated her kitchen, it was falling apart, and she worried about it on top of everything else she had on her mind with her upcoming surgery. We wanted to do something that gave them one less thing to worry about.”
Donations of materials, appliances and labor poured in as the project date neared, and continued until everything in the kitchen, right down to the dishes in the cabinets, and pots and pans and dishtowels was brand new.
York said she was so grateful and humbled by the generosity of the community as she coordinated the deliveries and work schedule for the project.
“Without the generous donations of equipment, time and product, this never could have happened,” York said.
When people heard about the McEnaney’s situation and the plans for the surprise kitchen makeover, donations of materials and labor poured in. York said Brandon Hardy, the store manager at Home Depot in Biddeford arranged for the donation of all new cabinets, counter tops and the sink. When a mishap sent several cabinets tumbling from the truck onto the road on delivery day, Home Depot replaced them immediately.
York said Roger LeBlanc and Jake Kennedy of LeBlanc Construction handled all of the demolition and installation of the entire kitchen, and Chris Wirth and Sherwin Williams donated and installed the new flooring.
Countless friends and even strangers got word of the work and pitched in to donate money for paint and appliances and everything else the busy, active family of four will need in their new kitchen. York said most of the crew of friends who donated or picked up a hammer or a paintbrush want to stay behind the scenes, keeping the focus on McEnaney and her tenacious battle to beat cancer.
But earlier this week as she sat in her sunny kitchen, recovering from her surgery and facing seven more rounds of chemotherapy, McEnaney wanted nothing more than to thank those who gave her such a “huge and beautiful gift.”
“It’s exactly what I would have done. The yellow is perfect, and it’s just all clean and new, I’m just blown away,” McEnaney said. “I had no idea. I was just completely floored.”
York said it was very touching to see how happy the four McEnaney kids, Aidan, 15, Liam 14, and twins Audrey and Hazel, almost 12, were with the new kitchen.
McEnaney said all four children like to cook and bake, and they all think the new kitchen is “just awesome.”
York said the group of friends were so happy that Mike McEnaney allowed them to do this for his wife and the whole family.
“I have to give Mike credit he was so supportive,” York said.
In addition to the full kitchen remodel, the “McEnaney Kitchen Surprise” crew, took a paintbrush to the dining room, giving it a fresh coat of paint, and freshened up both bathrooms with paint and a new toilet.
McEnaney said her surgery was successful and has given her renewed hope in her cancer battle. In her ever-positive frame of mind she said even if it gives her five more years, that’s five years toward medical advances that could help her again. For now, she’s happy to continue to heal from surgery, make plans to return to her job as a Special Education teacher in Wells in September, and enjoy her devoted family and friends in her brand new kitchen. She said the best thing about it is that her friends all came together and did this without asking.
“That’s the key to really knowing how to help,” McEnaney said. “If they had asked, I would have said ‘No, you don’t need to do that’, but they just did it, that’s what makes it so great.”
“When you’re dealt something like this, you can either be pissed off, or see it as one of life’s adventures, and that’s how we choose to look at it,” McEnaney said.
“That’s just Maureen being Maureen,” York said. “She’s a tough nugget. She’s been through so much, and she’s an inspiration to all of us.”