We’re currently in the process of actually making PROGRESS on the house. Of course, now that I’ve actually said that out loud it’s probably all going to go to hell in a handbasket.
This has all come about recently because the ban on toilet flushing in our house after Madeleine goes to sleep is beginning to wear on me. Now the logical question you might pose next is: wha? Well to explain, Madeleine’s crib is up against the bathroom wall, the same wall the toilet is on. So, if you flush the toilette then the baby wakes up. Not so fun. This is also difficult to explain tactfully to the babysitter.
In the past week we’ve begun the process, therefore, of moving Madeleine upstairs in to her own room on the third floor. What about the bunkbeds, you ask? In due time. Patience. Maybe in a 1.5 years… when she’s ready to move to a big-girl bed. Back to the move: This is not an easy task as the stuff that is currently occupying that room is out of control. It’s the room where we dump things that have been designated as “deal with that later” — and then when later never comes but guests do we hurriedly shove the items elsewhere. This is not an effective way of dealing with things.
The other issue we were facing was that we had a set of great bookshelves that we bought from Ikea in 2006, but the line was discontinued. So, we couldn’t add to the bookshelves… and we didn’t want to get rid of them because we spent a lot of money on them. And we didn’t want to buy yet ANOTHER set of bookshelves that wouldn’t match… Then this past weekend, as luck would have it we were able to add to the set when we took a chance and looked on Craigslist to see if anyone was selling the shelves we wanted… lo and behold! A moving sale… perfect. Exactly what we needed and for about 1/2 the price if we could have bought it new.
Stars are beginning to align.
For the past 2 weeks I’ve been tidying up the back room, which has involved filling many garbage bags with stuff and forcing me to go through the filing cabinets and examine boxes of things that at one point I thought were important (you never know when you might need that map to the Louvre that you picked up during your trip to Paris in 2002!) but now realize just isn’t. Hello, by the time I go back to the Louvre they’ll either have changed the entire layout, moved the building, or I’ll have lost the damn map anyway. The spare bed has been moved out (sorry family! there are other plans… a Murphy bed); the shelving unit is almost cleared off. Next up: the desk.
Tonight I will paint at least 2 walls! Perhaps this weekend the desk (with computer) will be moved over so that I can fix and subsequently paint the remaining two walls. Then when the smell of paint has evaporated we can move Madeleine upstairs. yea!
Once Madeleine is upstairs on the 3rd floor, Richard and I can do some work on the first floor without worrying that we’ll wake Mads up with noise. Richard actually has already started caulking the joints on the vestibule that he built earlier this winter… so it’s not like we haven’t been doing anything.
Progress is slow, but we are making progress. I will try and take some pictures so I’ll have some befores and afters to show off.
