Done?

Update #7 from Alese:
The FINAL week. Really.

It's been a couple of weeks since the last update, when so many big changes were happening relatively quickly after weeks of reconstruction, sanding, and painting. It felt great to see the changes and have all the floors done, and then we hit a couple of snags, and progress slowed.

The first issue was the kitchen cabinets, which didn't turn out well because of the paint sprayer malfunctioning and spurting out little blobs at the end of each spray. The contractor made a plastic bubble around the room and started over, re-sanding and repainting.  That took out one of the three workers and added a couple of days.  Then a week ago Monday night, the same primary worker who was going to do the bulk of finishing work, had a bike accident and broke his hip.  That has meant the other two can work no quicker than two-thirds their planned speed. Big sighs all around, but Ray and I and the contractor all agree we care less about how long this is taking and more about focusing on doing high quality, completely finished work.

When I can't control a certain aspect on my life, I find something else to control that I can. No, I didn't cut my hair, I rearranged our small living space. I picked up a couple of metal shelves to raise the coffee maker and toaster oven up off the bathroom counter, and now cups can fit underneath, giving us more real estate on the counter.  And I stacked a few boxes higher into corners, which gave us a little more floor space. 

Last Thursday, Nov 8th, the upstairs was declared officially DONE, and on Friday, the carpet installers arrived. We'd put them off over a half-dozen times, so this felt big. Bigger still was Saturday, when we moved furniture out of the attic and into the upstairs rooms! We now have the front and back guest rooms with their main pieces of furniture. The third side bedroom needs furniture and a sense of purpose, which will be your job to help us envision. 

Ray and I managed to get the furniture out of the attic without hurting any painted walls or backs, though my brain can't seem to gauge where my head is and bashed it into the attic ceiling. Three times. While in the attic, we were able to do a nice inventory of what's there, what can stay there through the move, what needs to go elsewhere, and where my knee-high, high-heel boots are now that the cold season has finally arrived and sandals need to hibernate for a while.

The big news for today is... drum roll... the contractor claims he'll be DONE with the downstairs today, done with the project, in a couple of hours. They're finishing touch-up painting and caulking right now, plan to move the fridge and stove back in, will hang towel racks and a last bathroom mirror, and will be ready to move the big furniture we need help with back into their places.

No photos today, but watch this space for before and after photos soon. 

To entertain you till then, enjoy this simile of the Vanessa Atalanta we've been enjoying in our back yard these past weeks.  (Oops, it has background sound, so turn it off first if you don't want to hear it.)