Week ending 12/30/11

Saturday and Sunday were Christmas Eve and Day, so no work happened there! Monday was a day of recovery.

One Wednesday, we decided to do another session on the garage and managed to empty two more boxes. Yay! It's still a horrible mess in there, but at least we are making progress. There's actually room to move around!

week ending 12/23/11

C was off this week and finished working on the second media pc and set it up in the den to run the home entertainment and tv equipment in there. It's nice to have the kitchen table back!

We celebrated Christmas early with some family on Wednesday.

Week ending 12/16/11

C was at work this week, and I was trying to get back on track after being out of town last week so no work on the house this week.

I did ask our gardener to give us a bid on a cement walkway on the side of the house. It got damaged in the last big earthquake and now tilts toward the house instead of away so water runs under the house when it rains. Not good! But that's the way it is with a fixer upper house - you get to things as you can and not everything can happen now.

Week ending 12/9/11

Nothing on the house this week - we got out of town for some much needed fun and rest. Our already long-overdue vacation in October had to be canceled due to the death of a family member so we finally got some time away. It was really nice!

Week ending 12/2/11

Over the weekend, we did another garage session. C would rather spend all day but my style is to break it into chunks so it doesn't feel like prison labor or ruin an entire day. It also takes way longer than it seems like it will - an hour of work on the garage means a 2.5 hour work session in total. In the first hour, we make a pile for trash and donate and sometimes things to be put elsewhere. It then takes about an hour and a half to put things in the trash and in the car, drop off the donation and clean up. So to me, it makes sense to stop at an hour and begin the second half.

On Saturday, La-Z-Boy called with our delivery date for the love seat - it was coming on Wednesday. That's a perfect day because I had nothing scheduled.

We also spent about 2 hours discussing our "big plans" for the house. I know we've done a lot already, but we think we are going to make big changes in the future. For one, our garage is in a bad spot and it's very small (16 x 18 compared with at least 20 x 20 for a two-car garage). We may knock it down and rebuild a bigger garage with some sort of living space or guest quarters above it. We also think we might add some space on to the house for better resale. Right now, because of the small size and only having one bath, our resale value much lower than it could be in this neighborhood.

It feels overwhelming, but we don't know when any of this will happen anyway so we'll see.

On Wednesday, the new love seat came and we're quite happy with it. Of course, now the plastic shelf and desk credenza look like crap!