andamu

Back at home. Or more accurately, the apartment. Actually, I guess "home" is still apt, since we are still living here; the house will only become home once we move in, in just more than ten days.
::
Speaking of the house, we might be running into deadline issues. Obviously I have not been able to work on the house at all these past three days that I have been at the conference, and it turned out that Nini's foot that we thought she had only sprained this weekend is actually broken. The end of the fifth metatarsal in fact. So my poor baby sister has been limping along all across campus, and obviously have not been able to do anything at the house in my absence either.
Needless to say our to-do lists (and our expectations) have undergone drastic changes. The kitchen is finally sparkling, top to bottom. From the mold and sticky goo behind and beneath where the refrigerator used to be, inside and outside the stove (where not even an attempt to wipe out the loose pieces of gunk had been made), behind and beneath the stove, scrubbing the grunge out of every nook and cranny, removing all the kitchen shelves and scrubbing them top and bottom, picking at the ick stuck in the drawer sides, cleaning the grease and filth off the kitchen doors before feeding the wood, and scraping layers of sticky black dust and fly carcasses off the tops of cabinets. We've scrubbed and disinfected the floor, and have finished painting. This monumental job we broke into sections, and completed over the course of several work sessions at the house. Inbetween we've managed to remove wallpaper from the kitchen and Nini's room, and cleaned, patched, texturized and painted the kitchen, family room and Nini's room.
::
So, what are the items left on the list of must-do things before we can move in? Touching up the paint in Angel Face's room, cleaning and texturizing the walls in the master suite, installing a few extra brackets and braces missing in the closet, and then paint the master. This would be the biggest paint job we've tackled yet, and I doubt that we'd be able to get away with a single coat of paint there. So figure an entire session for cleaning, taping off and laying drop cloth, ending with texturizing, and then two more sessions to apply a coat of paint in each.
I also still have to measure all the windows currently without window treatments, and buy and install blinds before we can move in.
::
We've found the entire experience to be incredibly hard work, but also fulfilling, leaving us with a sense of accomplishment after completing each task. I just wish that we had access to someone who could provide us with advice. We figured out a lot of things the hard way, having made the mistake and had to redo it. I'm also sure that we are still making a lot of errors that we haven't realized yet, and I am scared that they may come back to haunt us later. But we have to do the best we can, given what we have to work with and draw upon.
I promise the next blog will be less like a handy man's diary :-)