Brief Tuesday Morning Update

Of course we are way behind on all that has been going on- so much so in fact that it has left us no time to post.

The short version is the floor people arrived today and are starting in on our wood floors upstairs. I can’t imagine we’re their favorite customers because our floors are in pretty rough shape between the thick coats of paint and metal plates scattered across-but really it’s their own fault for transforming the ones downstairs so beautifully . Now that we know what they are capable of, of course we’re going to ask that of them again. We’re estimating that it will be at least a week until we can move back upstairs. Somehow we got lucky and even though it hasn’t rained in weeks, the few days they need the windows open to dry the floors the forcast is calling for- you guessed it- rain.

The long version of how we got here involves a lot of hard work and sweat this weekend by Dad and Kathy who were generous enough to volunteer their services (pictures and details to come as soon as we can once again access our computer). It’s all none too soon either- as of today we’re only 20 days out from our due date, and as of yesterday I am considered full term. Clint routinely speaks to the baby, asking him/her to stay in just a little longer so hopefully that’ll buy us some time.

Latest purchase

Our latest purchase in home renovation is the ceiling fan that will go in the nursery/office. We were pretty happy to have found something modern to suit our tastes, but with enough whimsy that it wouldn't look out of place in a child's room. We're cutting it close with the height clearance (you're supposed to have 7'), but we measured what's in our bedroom and it doesn't meet this standard either and it doesn't look too low. Not to mention we're not tall people, so if we happen to have incredibly tall visitors that are for some reason in our baby's room they will just have to duck.

Behold:

Trim update

Yea! Trim is dip stripped and ready to bring home. Of course last night we discovered a stash of trim we forgot to include in the first trip, but this will give me a good start at least. Now I just have to fight off the urge to work on my (our) birthday(s).

Baby steps

We are slowly but surely making progress upstairs. We now have all the door frames and window sill heat gunned, and the door frames about half completed in the chemical stripping process. So far I’ve slathered two buckets of plaster into the closet where we removed the rod and surrounding wood. We have our third bucket so I’ll work on completing that tonight.

The salvageable trim has been removed (for some reason much of the upstairs trim is mismatched) and as of yesterday is being dip-stripped. We’ll get that back in a couple of days and I’ll proceed with my hammer and screwdriver technique of removing all of the stubborn paint chips that remain, sanding it down, cleaning it with denatured alcohol, staining and shellacing. Then we’ll reinstall, after having given the rooms a fresh coat of paint. (Do you like how I sum all this up neatly like we’ll just knock this all out one afternoon and cheerio, we’re done).

In my optimistic world this is all done in the next two weeks by the time they arrive to refinish the floors. In reality I’m thinking that moving back upstairs is going to be a wonderful Christmas present.

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.