Progress Report

The basement is coming along. We have 3 or 4 sheets left to put up on the ceiling but all the walls are hung. The screws that aren't on a joint have their first coat of plaster on them. All the joints are taped and ready for plaster. I took a whole pile of drywall ends out today to help clear out the basement a bit so we could work. I was surprised at how little waste we've had. And I also moved the remaining 8 sheets so I could get behind them to plaster the last of the screw holes. Tonight Craig and I will start plastering the joints and leave them overnight to dry. He bought outside and inside edging strips so hopefully we'll get to some of those tonight too. He doesnt' get home until after 10PM so it makes for a really long day for him. I'm so proud of him for working so hard! But I guess it would be worse to have 2 mortgages than miss out on some sleep for a couple weeks while we get this place ready. The rest of the house is pristine and ready to show. We're just waiting for the basement now. Our agent is coming in the morning to check the place out and we'll talk a little about listing price and I'd like to get some suggestions for furniture placement, etc. Dad's coming on Friday to stay the weekend and get the plastering finished. My goal is to be painting Sunday night. I'll be up all night if I have to be. I'd really, really like to get the house listed next week.

I still have a couple little things to do but it's all finicky stuff that wouldn't make or break a sale. Just me being obsessive compulsive. Here's a couple photos of the basement in progress. The 'before' shots are all on the old computer. Once I get a chance to have the old hard drive transferred to this computer I'll upload the 'befores'. Not much of a change yet but I'm positive it'll look like a different house when it's all done. I can't believe how quick it's all coming together!

An Update

Okay, okay, I've been seriously neglecting my blogging but I have a good excuse, I swear!

We bought a house! It closes February 27. And the sale isn't conditional on the sale of this place. Yep. You got that right. We may end up with 2 mortgages come March. So I've been working my tail off getting this condo ready to list. Craig has been busting his butt finishing the basement. Remember the basement? Yes, the basement that was supposed to be tackled right after the kitchen was finished back in the spring. The same basement that was going to be finished before Ian arrived. This is the thorn in my side these days. It's been taking a lot of my energy to not scream "I told you so, dammit!"

Here's a few pictures of the new place to pacify everyone until I can get back on again. Hopefully sooner than 2 weeks. Yeah, sorry 'bout that.

Fire Station

Shaun and Craig went with Shaun's new preschool on a trip to the fire station last week. Shaun's little buddy Bailey went with his mum too, since Bailey goes to the same preschool.

Figures that the boys were more interested in the dump trucks in the parking lot than the fire trucks! Shaun's on the right in his fire-gear.

Updates

I've been a lazy blogger lately. We've been so busy getting the house ready to put on the market that my blogging, among other things, has taken a back seat. I really enjoy being able to unwind at the computer and check up on all my friends and I've been missing that.

The bottoms of my feet have paint in the creases because I've been painting so much. The whole main floor is completely repainted; ceilings and all. Add in the kitchen reno from the spring and the newer carpet and laminate from a couple years ago and TaDa! you have an updated main level. The main bathroom was redone about a year ago, right before I got pregnant with Ian, and painted at that time. Both bedrooms have a fresh coat of paint including the ceilings. All that's left is to patch the crack in the stairwell and repaint that wall and we're done everything except the basement. That's Craig's domain and I'm not saying another word about it. My brother-in-law even came over last night with his family and cleaned all the windows for us! It's like we have an extra window in every room now; it's so bright! I can hardly wait for the sun to shine so I can watch them sparkle.

I have all these desires to declutter the house and pack things away in boxes. Now that we're so close to buying our next house and listing this one, I want it to be ready when the times comes. I think I could find real motivation to get the work done if we were on a deadline, but that would cause unnecessary stress. And who needs more stress in their life? Not me, thankyouverymuch. My next project will be the walk in closet in out master. There's so much stuff in there from when we were younger. A lot of archives. We'll keep them but there's no need for potential buyers to see them. Not that we have all that much junk, because we really don't. But every house could always do well with some decluttering.

Craig and I agreed ages ago that when it came time to list we'd rent a storage locker for all our extra stuff, including the college-style furniture in the living room, and then rent some stuff to stage the house. I've gotta be honest, I'm so excited about staging the house! I've already picked out what I want to rent. Did you know you can rent an electric fireplace for only $3 a week? I've layed out the floorplan in my mind. It's going to be stunning. What things I can do with an array of options at my fingertips.

I'm mostly excited to have a real bed. Right now we have a terrific mattress and boxspring... on the floor. When we were married, our matrimonial bed was Craig's futon. Talk about college furniture! And the man didn't even go to college! We finally purchased a real queen size mattress and boxspring but couldn't agree on an actual bed (head board, frame, etc.) so we never ended up buying anything else. It's been, let me see, 4 years. Yep. Craig has promised me that the first thing I can have for the new house once we move is a real bed frame and headboard. I've promised him a 42" LCD TV.

Shaun has done amazingly well with all my painting. He even helped me this morning with the walls in my bedroom. I kept him in his jammies because they're older anyway and he took his paintbrush from his craft basket and went to town. He lost interest quickly (thank goodness because I was starting to worry about the carpet's safety) but stayed in the room watching me finish. He's so patient and honestly, so good. He passed the time examining all the things from the armoir in our room. It's pushed up against the bed so I can access the wall behind it, so Shaun was able to reach everything in it. He discovered pushpins, a magnifying glass, double-sided tape, pictures of me in college, and old menus from Pizza Hut that I used for a restaurant at the daycare I worked at. He got a real hit out of the double sided tape, "You can't believe this Dad: this tape is sticky on both sides!"

Ian's been doing better with the whole nap-for-at-least-an-hour thing. He seems to have one nap a day where he sleeps really deeply and the other 3 naps are a little lighter. I don't like to tiptoe when he's sleeping but sometimes I find myself doing that because he seems to wake so easily. And when he wakes up, rarely is he able to get himself back to sleep. He falls asleep on his own at the beginning of his nap but if he wakes up part way through, he needs his Suckie to soothe himself back into nappy-land. I can only hope he's able to do that eventually.

He wakes up around 7AM which seemed early at first, but Shaun starts at a new preschool on Thursday that begins at 8:30 so our whole house will have to be waking up earlier now. I'm okay with Ian getting up at 7AM... I think. :) Then the morning is pretty much eating every 3 hours, following the same eat-play-sleep routine that Shaun was on. The afternoons are a little more unpredictible. Usually he'll eat every 2 1/2 hours in the afternoon but some days he's able to go 3 hours. It all depends on how he's napping really. If he's sleeping well, I'll let him sleep until the 3 hour mark, but if he wakes up and his crying, I'll feed him just so that he doesn't wake Shaun up. Yeah, Shaun still naps nearly every day. What a great sleeper that kid is!

I've found myself comparing Ian to Shaun less and less. Maybe because Ian's personality is so vastly different from Shaun's so I am less apt to compare their schedules. Or maybe it's because I've done this before and I'm more just going with the flow. Whatever it is, I'm happy about it. I didn't want to be the mum who was constantly comparing her boys to one another. Ian will be able to flourish much better if he's allowed to do it at his own pace. At least he's sleeping 9-10 hours straight at night! Phew!

Finally

We've been talking about it for months and we finally did it. We bought a new computer. The old one was at least 10 years old and was a hand-me-down from my Dad's work when they discard computers and allow their employees to bid on them. Dad won a bid on it 6 years ago for $50 and gave it to us. Pretty sad, really, that we've had such a crappy computer for so long.

It came with Windows Vista. I haven't experiened any of the errors that the MAC commercials point to but it's taking some getting used to. I can't seem to figure out how to become an 'administrator' on this thing so I can download programs directly to C:, it keeps telling me I need to contact the administrator for permission. Um, I AM the administrator. And MSN Messenger isn't working either. This thing won't even recognize the file so obviously I did something wrong along the way.

We had a 30G hard drive added into the old computer (seems so small now that this one is 320G) for all our pictures and music. I need to have that moved over to this one eventually. But we forgot to get all the links from our Favourites menu. Well, I say 'we' but I really mean Craig. He's not a thinker like me. When he decides he wants to do something he never thinks it through before doing it. Like disconnecting the old computer. He just unplugged it. Exqueeze me, there's all sorts of stuff on there that we need to keep! We can't just discard it. I have resume info in case I ever decide to return to work, and all our music and photos, and programs that I'll need! It's going to be a busy few weeks while I try and get this faster but bare-bones computer up to standards.

But for now, I'm really enjoying the quiet operation since it isn't 'canning' 24/7!