Home Improvement Update

Back in July I posted this to-do list Things Are About to Get Real for the month of August.

Here comes my first update, although sadly, no pictures are included.

Things I can cross off the list:

• Trip to Indiana
• Backyard landscaping (It looks super nice with a new grill and patio set that I got at like 50% savings!)
• Stripping of basement carpet adhesive (with several contact highs even while wearing a respirator)
• Trip to Colorado (Baby's first airplane ride!)

While all of these things have been accomplished I believe only the trips and the landscaping actually occurred in August. These last 60 days have been a whirlwind of business and emotional breakdowns (read more about that later) and some things have been horribly neglected.

The family trips were great. Baby got to ride on an airplane, meet 3 great grandparents and Boo and I got to spend some time away from home and with each other.

Stripping the basement carpet and adhesive was a trip. First, the stripper is like rubber cement only twice as toxic. And it's not an easy task. Generally during home improvement projects like this Boo and I are ready to kill one another. But after about 16 man hours working together I was feeling pretty good. There wasn't a single time I felt like strangling him. When I made this observation out loud to him he smiled and said "Oh I wanted to kill you plenty of times". I'm glad we are making progress. :)

Another bonus, since I haven't been back to the blog in two months the new floor is also finished downstairs. It's AMAZING. It looks like glass, but isn't slippery. It has a design but is random as well so there's no repetitiveness to the pattern. It's simply awesome. And, the bill came in lower than I expected, so I feel like I saved money in the process! The painting is on hold for the time being because we found some mold in one of the walls and we need to do the drywall repair before painting. But I did find a killer color scheme for inspiration, and now that the weather is turning a bit chillier I may be able to recruit some help painting. I can't wait to post pictures of the finished project. I hope to have it done by Christmas, so Baby will have somewhere to toddle.

Speaking of painting I got one color (ie one wall) done in the guest room. The other color goes on the 3 remaining walls, but that's not a task to be done during nap time. It will have to wait for reinforcements. I think I should half cross it off the list.

All in all I'd say it's not a bad list of accomplishments considering the other life events I also conquered these past two months. Here's to continued progress through the end of the year.

:)