Every Room in the House

From Nancy: I must have been crazy planning to remodel the kitchen and repaint the entire house at one time. On the other hand, what better time than now when neither Chick nor I are spending a great deal of time here (well, Chick not all) and I am eating almost all of my meals out of either a lunch box or restaurant take-out box.

In addition to the kitchen remodel, on Monday the painters showed up and within the course of one short hour every item of every room was huddled into plastic-wrapped impermeable mounds. Four guys just came in and dismantled the place and bada-bang, bada-boom, each room was unrecognizable. On Monday night I came home to one bed uncovered but with towering furniture all around. Two toilets and one sink were open but otherwise the house was inoperable (they did leave the lights on). By last night, Tuesday, the master bedroom and bathroom were fairly well in order, the furniture was a little misplaced and there were no wall switch-plates or anything like that in place, but both rooms were ready for a good vacuum (the floors), including a shower (for me) and a sleep without the feeling of being surrounded by giants that could fall on me at any moment. 

Also, some of our 20+ year old inexpensive “Danish” furniture, which has been on its last legs for some time now, pretty much fell apart with the move. Our bookcases in the living room totally self-destructed and the top separated from our poor wobbly desk in the bedroom. The kitchen guys have been nice enough to haul away the bookcases and our new built-ins are now scheduled for April 15th and will accommodate the items once stored in both pieces. 

Today, I am waiting for the contractor to show up to estimate the installation of the grab bars, shower head, toilet frames, hand rails, and bidet toilet seat in order to make the house safe for Chick to return. The contractor promises he will be able to complete the work next week. Actually, without the need for stairlifts, the job should be quite straight forward with the exception of the bidet toilet seat which needs some electrical work to support the heated water reservoir.

This morning when I woke up, the magnitude of chaos around me really hit me, with my single room of refuge and a huge cleanup waiting for me at the end of the week. I am confident that the painters will clean up after themselves well enough, but the house had collected a fair amount of dirt and dust during the three months that Chick has been sick, all the painting and furniture moving just emphasizing the work still to do and spreading around the dust.

My rationale for doing all this house upgrades at once was that this would be kind of like ripping-off a bandaid all in one go. Just tear up the house, from top to bottom, and “get the job done”. Rationally sound, but emotionally CRAZY!