Has it only been one week? For the amount of stressing I've been doing you'd think it's been a year!
Let's see, last weekend Debie and Paul came over and we started rewiring the house so it's safer. We took down the bathroom dropped ceiling and realized why it had been put up - one corner of the ceiling had old water damage and so the ceiling needs to be replaced. Paul says that's not hard. My parent's came over and took all the residual nails and hardware out of the walls. Heather came by and gave her expert opinion on how to decorate the bathroom. We handed out candy on halloween and met lots of neighbors and their kids. We drank wine and threw out everything that wasn't nailed to the wall (and a few things that were)! We cut our first (and second) hole in the wall.
A local female cabinet maker and my friend an energy consultant came over as well to give their opinions. I found out that if I were to spray foam insulate my attic and basement and put blown-in insulation in my walls my heating load would be 10,000 Btus (which is small).
On Sunday Debie and I spackled the walls and ceilings and tested out the stain blocking paint I had purchased and Paul worked on the electricity some more. The bedroom electricity is now finished and it has a ceiling fixture!
I took most of Monday off so I had the plumber, heating contractor, and general contractor come by to give me quotes. And I washed all the tar off the windows. They're cool flip down windows so you can wash the outside without going outside.
I also took Wednesday off and tried to get a building permit but failed because, well, *I* don't know anything about which walls are load bearing. Sheesh! Oh well. I'll be hiring someone to cut into those walls anyways. Mom and I went up to Lunenburg to look at a surplus building supply warehouse and saw lots of surplus vanities and cabinets and tile and countertops. Then we went over to a regular building supply store and looked at all the styles of cabinets and doors. I got some quotes for a new front door and screen.
We decided we couldn't make any decisions until we looked at the marble tile that I had purchased, so we went back to the house and stared at the cabinets for a while and put out a couple of boxes of tile. At which point I realized that there were two different shades of "Red Jade" tile - five boxes of the one I liked and 25 boxes of a much pinker version. I decided to sell them instead of using them. Then I decided that I didn't have the money to the kitchen, so that was depressing.
Also this week I got a quote for spray foam insulation and fought with Verizon (they refuse to sell me DSL, they'll only sell me FiOS - for much more money) and turned in a change of address form and bought a fridge and range hood and two ceiling fixtures (the first two from the local appliance shop, the lights off of craigslist). And I've been researching energy efficient french doors and how to refinish wood floors.
Phew. Has it only been a week? That's crazy! Plus this week I've had to prepare for 3 classes and a half-day symposium (tomorrow) that 85 people from around New England are coming to! Yikes! I'll be glad for Sunday. When I'm going to wash the walls and remove some cabinets and maybe fix the bathroom ceiling and primer everything so it stops SMELLING!
