My Vacation

I'm on vacation.  Where did I go you ask?  Two blocks down the street to work on the house.   Yep, that's how we roll.  No Europe or Caribbean for us.  I've officially taken off my professional hat and put on my hard hat.  While construction is going on outside my husband and I have been working our butts off inside.  I'm working on the windows and he's working on taking some walls down for the plumbers.  That's right, I said plumbers.  Remember way back when when I said that the plumbing was almost done?  Well we got that work inspected and it didn't pass.  Our new contractor brought in his plumber who agreed with the inspector that the best thing to do would be to rip all the plumbing out and start fresh.  That was fun news.   It took a few minutes to comprehend and then a few days to decompress, but we've moved on and the work is finally getting done properly.  We've really learned a lot from this process, like never buy an old house again.  Ever.  Oh, and apparently you really do get what you pay for.   

 Anyway this week has been in slow motion.  I started the first couple of days taking down wallpaper in the old kitchen.  Then I come to find out that we're going to be hiring someone to finish the walls with a skim-coat.  So that was a big fat waste of time and sweat.  The past few days I've been working on 3 windows.  Yes, days and 3 windows.  I am beyond frustrated.  Imagine a hundred plus years of painting and sloppily repainting the window sills.  It's bumpy and chipped everywhere.  At first I was really gung ho and thought I was going to strip the paint off every window.  Now that I've returned from fantasy land I am thinking that I need to get some really nice curtains to both cover and draw the eye away from the hideousness.  I gave it the old college try though.  I've been a sanding, spackling, caulking fool and they still look like crap.  I'm getting ready to throw some paint on them and call it good.  On to the thousand other windows in the house that are equally as awful.  

On the up side we officially have progress with the new kitchen and porch.  We really are going to have windows but we haven't ordered them yet so for now we've got plywood.  Whatever gets us into the house!

Here's the porch coming along.

This is the old kitchen (and my nemesis...the windows) with the new kitchen opening to the right.

Here's the shell of the new kitchen.

The kitchen looking into the old kitchen which will now be the family room.

So there is progress, but we still need HVAC finished up, new electrical, a bathroom and a kitchen.  

Serenity now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!