Rest for the Weary

With the holidays, the painting, the flooring, and the packing, Colleen and I have been really busy these last few weeks, but I wanted to get a short blog update in before we head to France, Switzerland, and Italy for two weeks. We'll be fitting a lot of stuff into those two weeks, but it should be more relaxing than life has been around here lately.

First, the bathroom vanity is all done. They finally got the new top in and installed the faucets just a day or two later. It looks really nice. The shower enclosure still isn't done and there are a few towel bars to hang, but this sucker is getting really close to complete.

Our washer and dryer were delivered the weekend before last. The dryer had a piece broken off of the door preventing it from snapping closed, but we were still able to use both and did so a lot. You can say I'm biased because I used to work there, but my whole experience with Sears on the product delivery side has been really great so far (obviously the sales experience was good since I hand-picked my sales person). Also visible to the right is our tankless gas hot water heater.

The next big thing, as the previous blog alluded to, was the floor getting installed. I spent better than 20 hours over two days with help from a cast of thousands. It really was a team effort. Snap in flooring is most easily installed by putting an entire row of boards together, and then snapping that row in all at once. This isn't a big deal if your room is 10 or even 15 feet long. However, when the room is more than 30 feet, it becomes challenging. To help, whenever Paul and I (then later Duncan and I, then even later, Jeremy and I) would finish a row, we would yell "Huddle Up" and anyone who was in the house (sometimes as many as five people) would show up to snap in the row. Unfortunately, toward the late night of Sunday, it was pretty much just me working. This picture is me still working to finish those last few rows (you can see the blue underlayment to the left). [Colleen would like to interject that she was trying to help and took this picture while awaiting her next assignment]

Just to really make the project feel complete, after the floor was all done we set up our futon (which I somehow convinced Jeremy to help carry down the stairs). Here is a shot of the new room with the new futon. Take note, some of you may be sleeping on it someday.

I'm hopeful, though not confident, that the shower enclosure and all the little items left on our 'punch list' will be completed when we get back from our trip. We can't wait to move into the new bedroom! Check back with us in two weeks and we'll find out together (I may have to use this space for some vacation pics too).