"Big" Projects

Things have been a little chaotic at our house, and are most likely only going to get more so for the next six + weeks. It all started with this project:

We gave away our tiny swing set to a family with smaller kids, and invested in a larger one that better suits the needs of our family. The kids were bounce-off-the-walls excited, and even offered what help they could to Teag as he labored to put the thing together.

Dany helped by sorting hardware and handing it to Teag as needed

Maisie "helping" as she makes herself comfortable on the uninstalled slide

Rory put on the gloves and was ready to go!

It was also bought as a preemptive measure to preserve our sanity as we begin other, larger projects. I'll get to that in a minute.

The next thing we did is invest in a much larger, much sturdier shed, to replace the aluminum eyesore that's been in our backyard since we moved in. Teag has spent days putting the thing together, and unfortunately, is still not done.

We bought the shed as a kit, and despite the fact that I asked multiple times if it came with instructions, they delivered it without a single one short of "it's pretty self-explanatory". Not so, says the Teag! He is actually quite skilled in carpentry as was clearly evidenced by the beautiful hall-tree he made me for Christmas. As such, I know that he is quite capable of putting something like this together, but he has had to do all kinds of extra cuts, adjustments, fixes, etc, and we've been less that pleased at how much longer this particular project has taken due to this. It should have gone up fast, and instead it's sucked over a week out of our lives, and still requires quite a bit of work to finish it up.

Last, but certainly not least, is this project; the very large one I mentioned:

We've spent the last several days taking everything out of our basement in preparation for a total remodel. Everything will be ripped down to the studs, except for our laundry/storage room, which will remain mostly untouched. Our three girls are sharing a room upstairs now, where the word "tight" doesn't even really begin to describe the lack of space available. I can't even really get a good picture to illustrate, because of how limited the space is.

You can barely see Maisie on the top bunk, and I'm standing in the closet to take this picture. There's about three feet of space between the beds, and that equals pretty much all of the floor space period. We can't even open the bedroom door all the way, and you can see the drawers behind Rory's bed are blocked too. Thank Heaven's this is a temporary set up. All of this is to get us ready for this project:

Baby Bilbo is due to arrive in less than six weeks. We knew when I got pregnant that we didn't really have a place to put him, and have spent months going over different ideas on how to fix this. Moving didn't feel like the right option, and various remodeling projects were proposed and discarded as we figured out what would best serve our needs/budget. We quickly discovered that living on a corner lot limits your options significantly :(.

This picture doesn't come close to doing the space justice, but we actually have quite a large utility room that was mostly used to store a bunch of stuff we should have gotten rid of years ago. So our final game plan has become this: We are building another bedroom in half of what used to be our family room, and then extending the family room into all that unused utility room space. When all is said and done, our family room will be barely smaller than what it is now; just a little cutout for the furnace and water heater. We're also having them cut out larger windows, and redoing our nasty bathroom that we barely even used, because of how nasty it was.

Because it took us so long to decide on a fix, we are up against obvious deadlines, which is an unfortunate circumstance. Teag will be doing all the finish work in the bathroom as well as the trim and paint for the bedrooms and family room, which will most likely fall right about the time Bilbo is set to make his entrance. Obviously we can't move anything back in until that stuff is done, so we're looking at cramming six people into two bedrooms on the top floor of our house. And anyone who has been in a Rose Park house knows that's not a lot of space for that many people to squeeze into. Hence the playground, as a place to send the kids when we need some distance. I'll also be dealing with the noise and craziness of construction when I'm sleep-deprived with a newborn, and no place to go to nap. Could be a real adventure! If the first thing you notice when you see me is dark circles under my eyes, now you'll know why!