Downstairs Transformation

It is hard to describe how lame our basement/downstairs looked two weeks ago.  The carpet was old and gross in the main area and older and grosser in the downstairs bedroom that functions as my office.  While we had cleared a lot of items out and put them into storage, it was... not good.  And the carpet smelled somewhat moldy due to the insane flooding we had in Northfield in 2010.  This is not to mention that the walls were best described as "poorly painted dingy grey white." 

And did I mention that it was full of STUFF?

It was full of stuff.

Here's what the downstairs looked like before we started working on it:

Here's what it looks like now:

I took several photos of my office, first when it was full of STUFF:

Then when it was empty, so that you could see the horrendous and dirty pink carpet, as well as the bizarre "texture painting" on the walls.  I'd like to know what kind of drugs the people who did this to this room were on so that I can agitate for them to be made illegal.

SERIOUSLY, WHO DOES THIS TO A WALL???

Austin and Alex and I primed over the weird texture painting, and then I left for three days for work in Rochester.  I came home and the carpet had been replaced, the walls had been painted a light peach (by Austin), and my office was set up in such a way that all the extraneous stuff was in the closets.  (Of course much of it is in our storage unit now, too...)

My desk is still out, complete with computer, printer, and a jigsaw puzzle I'm working on (as well as the usual odds and ends that can be cleared away for a showing), but... wow, this is a whole different room now.  Check it out:

Aside from how great (and unfamiliar) the downstairs of our house now looks, we also put an air exchanger into our house last week.  We've had a lot of condensation on windows in the past and just too much humidity in the house.  It was starting to be a problem, so we decided, what the heck, let's spend nearly two thousand more dollars on this house.  The difference is noticeable; there is no condensation on any window anymore and we don't have a dehumidifier running anymore (which means that I can plug in my special lamp for cross stitching and handwork!). 

So this is all good.  It means that even if our house doesn't sell, our house is a lot nicer than it was.  It doesn't solve the two problems that make us need to sell it, though; 1. we have too much stuff for it (now we are paying for it to stay in storage, UGH) and 2. our kids need separate bedrooms.  If we get desperate we can move Alex downstairs into my office, but the Too Much Stuff Problem isn't as easy...

The Moving Begins, (even as we're not really packed so well...)

The progress at hand is this:  We have closed on the house and are sort of...moving?  We don't have a truck coming until later this month, so for now I am straddling two work sites.  So to speak.  Well, 3.  Because there is strike for Forbidden Planet this weekend.  And it will be mega.

We brought a bunch of Scott's gear to the house today - BIG thanks to Ursula and her truck and her muscles and her sense of humor - as well as some more of my kitchen stuff.

Waffles from now on will have to be prepared THERE, for I have no waffle irons here anymore. The fact that I have 4 waffle irons is patently absurd, really. Maybe we should discuss which I should get rid of. They are all weirdo irons. Two "normal" Mickey's, one "Swedish hearts" and one Belgian Waffle Maker. The question is how often do I really make waffles at all? For myself, I could probably stand to make no more waffles ever.  And - this just in- the reality based reality is that the George Foreman Grill also has...Belgian Waffle Plates.  So.  I COULD, in fact, make waffles here right now, in spite of having moved 4 waffle irons to the new house today, AND I could also be said to have 5 waffle irons.  Insanity.  

I am also thinking of downsizing the dishes. Crazy but true, and yet if we run the dishwasher every night, as we are wont to do, how many dishes do we really need even with 7 people? We could run it after every meal and still need only...7.  Probably.

The problem is...we have 3 sets. One is the nice Denby Regency Green that we picked in 1992. One is the Corelle stuff that is not the nicest but is darned practical, stores in no space, lightweight and nigh-indestructible. The third is Andrew's parent's Strawberry Fields "everyday" Wedgewood from when Andrew was growing up, which was passed to Jeanne and then to us as "something to get us started with."

The bottom line is, I definitely want the Denby and if I have a second set, the Corelle, I think? Not sure what I should do with the Wedgewood aside from put it in a box and don't open it. I'm not sure about donating it or whatever, laden with memory as it may be.  On the other hand, who chooses Corelle when they can have Wedgewood, right? 

One of my boys continues to want to sleep in the new house instead of coming home to the old house at the end of the day. I brought him there after school to do more unloading this afternoon and we just hung out and arranged things for a while.  You can probably imagine how that division of tasks actually went. I feel like I should be doing more here at the Eagan house. It was good to get a bunch of Scott's stuff moved, today, and now we have a great big table in "The Study," so there is homework potential there at least.  I am also going to bring the small desk (from Andrew's childhood) over probably tomorrow, so that if one of the boys wants to study in his room, that is a definite option.  Some people do better with more supervision.  Others do better studying in more solitude.  In this house, we probably have room for both.

I am so lucky.  In a million, gazillion ways, I am lucky. Additionally, unfortunately, I am feeling, as I knew I would, incredibly awkwardly conspicuous from having just bought a ridiculously big, fancy looking house.  People are excited about it and mock-claiming rooms and wanting to see it and plan parties and all, and that is totally understandable and meant, I know, in a spirit of fun and support.  At the same time...here we have found another edge of my comfort zone:  I'm REALLY not a center-stage person in life.  I occasionally put on some other aspect and do showy things for an evening or in performance, but...that's not really me.  Or at least not the greater part of me.  There is a reason I mostly lurk in the shadows and try to make things happen nigh-invisibly:  too much attention just makes me uncomfortable, especially attention for things that feel somewhat personal. BUT...there is no way to make this happen invisibly, and I guess I determined that I just have to push through this uncomfortable part where I feel I'm being mercilessly gawked at.  Well, at least until we get to the part where this is just boring old regular life again. In a lot of ways, I'd rather stay in my comfort zone, but there just wasn't room for this big crazy idea of an intentional extended family in a boring old regular zone, I guess.  So...I'll just have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

More things to prep for tomorrow.  Hopefully we'll hear from Sara soon!

The Answer Please?

Wow.  So the answer to the question of the Clean-Out Challenge is that for me, at least...given all the other stuff I've been grappling with and my general tendency toward doing a lot of other stuff besides what I'm supposed to be doing...the answer to the question is:  No.  I can't go from disaster to move-ready in 6 weeks.  Not if I'm supposed to keep driving kids around, cook Thanksgiving Dinner and build a spaceship out of random stuff at the same time.  Maybe if I had a little FOCUS and maybe if I had a crew, but me by myself in "found time" it did not go so well.  And that is OK, partly because I knew that was the case hen we started and partly because there just aren't that many immediate consequences to my failure.  We'll get it all done eventually, but I'm not that impressed with myself here, but we're closing on the house tomorrow, and I have at least a few boxes packed to take over there afterward to start making the kitchen somewhat functional during this insane interim period.  I am developing new tactics and strategies even as I am realizing what I knew all along:  This was a crazy, crazy plan.  If I hadn't lost my Reality Card, I'd have said "No way!  Too tough!" for sure.

Most importantly, we have an upcoming visit from my Father-in-Law, and that guy has standards!  He's coming to see Andrew's show which is really nice, but I still feel like we either have to somehow keep him away from the house or I have to get at least the main traffic areas looking MUCH more presentable and less like they belong to a Goddess of Chaos.

The good new is:  Well, hey, I did get that bedroom looking miles and miles better, and I've gotten a lot of bags of stuff just gone.  Is there more than can go?  Sure.  Will there always be?  Sure.

In the midst of Rusty's visit, I will also have to take a day out to dismantle and store the set for Return to the Forbidden Planet.  I am prepared to be a little ruthless and say that we are keeping standard size platforms, wood longer than 2', full and near-full sheets of plywood.  And the video screen.  Everything else probably needs to go.

Once that set is all put away and Rusty heads out, I think Scott gets very busy with auditions for Completely Hollywood.  And then off to Arizona.  And the insanity continues.

Even though the challenge is officially over, I don't think the challenge is actually officially over.  What do YOU think?

New Week, New Carpet, And Miscellaneous

The absolute grinding frustration of last week has mostly resolved, in part because our "hit them hard and eradicate them" campaign to get rid of head lice has been very successful.  I did a lot of laundry and vacuuming and some shampooing; Austin attended to the tedious business of picking nits out of J's hair.  (I would have done more of this because it is a very big job, but nits are tiny and I've been putting bifocals off forever... you do the math).

And this week has been pleasant.  I had an unexpected day off on Tuesday for which I still got paid (thank you Paid Time Off and Excused Absences!) and have been busy in the house doing more laundry, reading, and even just hanging out with the kids and listening to holiday music.

The biggest news this week is that our downstairs is being recarpeted this week.  The large area that used to have slightly water damaged, greyish carpet over it now has a nice, high quality neutral beige carpet.  The staircase, which had ancient seafoam green carpet on it (for reasons that I still don't understand the stairs didn't match anything else), have also been recarpeted with this nice new product.  Tomorrow the horrible pink carpet in my office (or what would be a downstairs bedroom) will be replaced with a darker neutral carpet.  Assuming we can move all the crap out of here anyway...

Here is a photo of Austin moving the stuff out of the main downstairs area so that it can be recarpeted:

Notice the dingy grey carpet that is now GONE.  Also Austin's super muscular physique.

Here is a photo of the new carpet, as seen on the stairs:

Pretty!


Additional good news is that there are now people who want to actually come and look at our house.  We are in the middle of scheduling two showings. 

Finally, I have to share a cute story that Austin told me that made me remember why I actually like living in this house.  Our next door neighbor, who works at Carleton with Austin, sent him an email saying that their family was sad when they saw the "for sale" sign go up in our yard.  But she went on to suggest that if we do move, we should "leave the cat in the window, as it provides Scotty [their dog] with hours of entertainment."  I had to laugh at that!  It's good to know that someone is enjoying Apollo's window-sitting.

Bonus Apollo photo, just because:

Apparently he couldn't find any actual people to cuddle with on this particular day, so one of Julia's American Girl dolls had to suffice.

How to Build a Spaceship out of Junk in 10 Days or Less

The purging, sorting, clearing out in preparation of packing has come to a near-total standstill while I paused to build a spaceship from found items as well as supplies mostly, I'm afraid, from Menards.

The set I was building this week was a bit of a doozy and designed by a very talented designer friend.  Brilliant, beautiful, spaceship interior, but big and cumbersome as well.

This is over 400 square feet of platforming all of which includes carpet padding and painted canvas on top, plus a kitchy console, band wall, and projector screen.  Begun exactly 10 days ago with platform pulling and pre-painting of all available exposed wood, installation completed yesterday with final clean-up today.  It has blinking lights and running water.  It can take you into space and I've been over it, under it and in its guts a lot the past week.  It was not my design but I've been fairly engaged in the building and moving of it, and it has been exhausting for a lot of obvious and less obvious reasons.  Juggling the kids while working on this has been tough.  My right hand and forearm picked this week to get all gimpy, painful and pathetic.  And I have not been a happy camper.  When things get challenging, REALLY challenging, I get a lot less friendly.  It's true.  Moderate challenge makes me pretty happy.  Big time-crunch, not so happy.

All this talk about the magic being somewhere outside of one's comfort zone aside...honestly, when I am truly outside my comfort zone doing something really challenging and difficult, I am not even slightly magical to be around.  I think I get serious and brusque and sometimes even...less than nice.  I have made it outside my rather considerable comfort zone a few times this year and I now realize just where that line is.  When there is a chance that I might fail and may other people are counting on me not to fail, that is where it is.  And it is not actually pretty.  I am going to go out on a crazy limb here and say that I've now been outside my comfort zone quite a few times in the past, year or two.  And while perhaps sometimes some magic may happen there, mostly it kind of sucks.  I'm working hard, often hurting, worrying, scrambling. I kind of lose my sense of humor and my patience is just not what it usually is.  Challenge simultaneously brings out the best and the worst in me.  Some people get it, some people get affronted.  Most people are just glad when things settle a little and I start smiling and laughing again.  I'm just glad when I get to laugh at something other than my own shortcomings.  And woe be unto him who dared ask "So how's the packing going?"

Well, now that that is all pretty well in place, I get to go back to worrying about how we're going to clean-out and move all this...STUFF at home.  I'm definitely pre-exhausted!

ISSUES

As Corinna mentioned in a recent blog post, we are both experiencing what she called "ISSUES" in our quest to clean our homes, sell them, and get the Hell out of them. 

Our issues are diverging pretty radically since our lives are pretty different.  I don't have a play to deal with, for example.  On the other hand, I do have a nursing job in another city, so along with the kids and Austin and social obligations (both family and friends) and the holidays... I also have to be out of the house a lot, working.

These are expected stressors at this time of year and in this situation, but in the last week we have run into two more.  One is that this house needs a lot of work, and some of it is unexpected and expensive.  We decided to recarpet the downstairs and then we decided we couldn't afford it... and then I realized I could sell some of my Paid Time Off hours (because I rarely use them) and so we decided we would not only recarpet, we would do it with the more expensive, higher quality carpet.  (This might seem silly but I think it will be a selling point - and if we wind up staying here for longer than we anticipated, we will not have to recarpet again.)

More money issues were piled on that on Tuesday afternoon when our realtor advised us that we should spend $2,000 or so and get an air exchanger for our house.  We have had humidity in our house for a long time; condensation on the windows, and mildew forming in the bathrooms.  It is beginning to damage the wood in the house and it does need to stop.  And we probably can't sell the house it if continues to have this problem.  So... more money needs to be put in so that we can get out.

I was just making myself okay with this and figuring out how to pay for new carpet, an air exchanger, continue to make progress on painting in the house and doing other odd jobs when the phone rang... and it was the school nurse calling to say that Julia had nits in her hair.  Great.  Head lice.  I spent the rest of the next twenty-four hours or so doing 18 loads of laundry, vaccuming all the carpet and furniture, and realizing that nits are tiny and I should really relent and make the transition to bifocals.

And that pretty much sums up last week's issues.

After the lice crisis was under control, I primed the walls in my office, covering up the insane texture painting that some previous resident left (photos forthcoming in a future blog).  And I packed some things up, Austin continued painting, and we even went to a Christmas party on Saturday night and had fun.

This coming week I'm working several days, but we are also getting the new carpet.  I'm hoping it will be a less stressful week overall, and we'll see major progress in the way our basement looks.

Plaaaatforms

These pictures are terrible BUT do show a percentage of the platforms that we painted today.  This is about...I want to say maybe 23%.  Lots of platforms.  Lots of blue and gray paint.  Lots of legs.  My rockstar son painted a hole bunch of legs.  There was one platform that was brilliantly assembled with too-short staples holding the plywood on the frame.  It broke and had to be repaired.   They look like lap lanes in a swimming pool, don't they?

I'm a little bit exhausted.  Load-in is tomorrow and all I can say is:

1.  At least I am not running a marathon beforehand. 

2.  It's nice not to have to clean everything up beautifully for rehearsal.  

3.  There is nothing else.

EXCEPT that I think of all the other things I need to be doing right now.  I think of the opening night of another show and the show of a good friend I'd have liked to have seen tonight and I wonder why I  was  crawling on hands and knees, getting covered in paint, trying to pull everything together, challenging my gimpy elbow.

And thanks to Scott, Emma, Bailey and Chris for coming in to help.  Thanks to Justin for coming in and not making things more difficult.