Adiós contractors!

The shower glass was installed in the second floor bathroom yesterday, and the hole in the wall of the furnace room was repaired. Which is a huge relief, as it was big enough to let a raccoon or a skunk squeeze in. And being fall, that’s a distinct possibility. Especially since there’s a whole family of raccoons inhabiting the roof of the old witch’s house next door that watch us through the skylights in our back room. Yes, it’s a little creepy.

These were the last two jobs to be done by the contractors. It’s going to be kind of strange to not see the crew every morning on our way out to work. And I might miss them just a little. I’ll definitely miss the excitement of coming home to something new every day.

So now we’re on our own with the bottomless list of stuff that needs to be done. I can’t decide if I should work from the top of the house down, from the basement up, or try to get the main floor in shape and then move out from there. Or maybe I should try to get all the dusty stuff done and then clean. I’m sooooo tired of the endless dust.

I think that maybe I’ll tackle the second floor bathroom first as I don’t really want to move our stuff up from the basement bathroom until it’s all painted and cleaned. We painted the walls a pale grey (Marilyn's Dress from Benjamin Moore) before the fixtures were installed, but some things had to be moved (like the vanity lights) and installing the toilet seemed to take some chunks out of the wall. So there’s a bunch of drywall patching that needs to be touched up. And there’s still a fair amount of trim that needs to be painted. Some of it has one coat already, but the doors are only primed. Hopefully I can get that done over the next few evenings.

This weekend I’m going to tackle the linen closet. I’m looking forward to getting all of our linens unpacked from the Rubbermaid containers and various other places that they’ve been shoved during the reno. I have to build some shelves and then they’ll need to be painted as well. It feels like the painting will never end.

I’ve been holding off on the inaugural run of this beauty:

I think that this weekend I’ll clean her out, bust out a glass of wine and a good book and hide from the boys relax in there for an hour or two. Or as long as the hot water lasts – that thing is huge!

And I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t end up on the kitchen floor. Hopefully all that tearing down of the kitchen ceiling and ripping up the second story floor pays off and the new joists hold up. Here's a shot taken during the reno that shows how woefully under-supported the old floor was - and how bowed down the old (darker) joists were.

 

Truthfully, I’m still a little nervous about how much the full tub in the middle of that unsupported span, with me in it, will weigh. Wish me luck!