Movin' on down

Labor day weekend was a productive one for us, and while my initial instinct was to try to figure out how we could pull off a tropical vacation somewhere, the reality of our renovation workload won out and instead we set out to see how much we could get done upstairs. Let me first state how much this was largely possible thanks to the heat gunning expertise of a one Mary Martineau, who devoted a rather warm evening to stripping our upstairs doorframes. (We still owe you dinner for that!) With this jump start we got just enough motivation to really do some damage. We began by moving nearly everything downstairs. As you can imagine, this has created quite a sight. We have our mattress in the living room floor, our dressers around the perimeter of the room, and our office equipment neatly set up in the dining room. We have in essence gone from living in a two bedroom house to a studio apartment. But at the same time, I will say it’s quite cozy. With the increasing middle of the night trips to the bathroom I can appreciate not having to navigate the stairs, and with the pillows added to the bed to accommodate the ever-growing belly I no longer have to worry about either myself or Clint rolling off the bed and falling the great distance to the ground (our bed was ridiculously high). AND as an added bonus those middle of the night trips to eat a bowl of cereal so that I can sleep in (otherwise the hunger prevents it)- are much easier with the kitchen only a few steps away.

Once everything was out we sealed off the area with two tarps and in essence made it a quarantined area, and Clint went to town on heat gunning the door frames. All of these precautions are being done in the likelihood given the age of the house that the paint being stripped contains lead. As of yesterday I am thrilled to say all four door frames have been heat gunned, most the trim has been removed (for dip stripping), and we are making substantial progress toward getting it all the necessary work completed by the September 25th deadline, when the floor people will arrive to refinish the upstairs floors. We realize this is cutting it ridiculously close but we’re doing it this way for a couple of reasons. First and most important is the health of the baby. While in a perfect world this would all be done before there was a baby, alas there is so we have two options- either do it before the baby is born, or after. After talking to the doctor we found out that while the baby is in utero, for it to be exposed to anything- be it lead or the fumes from polyurethane I would have to be exposed to it in such concentrations that it enters my bloodstream. Given that I stripped all the wood in the living room for about 6 months straight, not always taking perfect precautions and my lead levels tested normal, I feel pretty confident that the baby is safe, especially given the steps we’re taking to ensure it. In contrast, once the baby is here, all it has to do is breathe the air directly. Thus this way, all of the work that even presents a modicum of danger is done and out of the way (forever!) before little Reno arrives. Worst case scenario this means we’ll still be living downstairs whenever he/she decides to arrive, but again- it may just make it easier being in a smaller space for a bit where everything is almost literally at arms reach. Not to mention this embodies the fly by the seat of our pants lifestyle we are much more accustomed to living- I can’t even imagine how boring life would be if we had the nursery complete now, like most normal people do. I suppose this is as appropriate a lifestyle for the baby to enter into as we could imagine, we’re at least setting it up with realistic expectations of life with Clint and I as parents.