10 days

Ten days ago we purchased our new home. When I left it this evening, I was stunned by the fact there's a lot left to do but we have made an amazing amount of progress in 10 days. Even though we've been working away that whole time, today was a turning point. Today, the house started to feel like it had turned into our future home.

We have spent many, many hours stripping wallpaper. So many that it is disheartening to think of what we could have accomplished in the same amount of hours and muscle aches. I have one finger that doesn't hurt and the rest of me is wrecked. Neck, head, back, shoulders, stomach (though that hurts from coughing), legs, butt - all of me. I swear to you if I get through this without dropping 20 pounds, I will be amazed. Oh, and the PCOS poster child.

We were supposed to have a family friend over to help with painting starting Saturday- and this person has a sprayer so it would presumably have made things go much faster. He forgot, went hunting instead, and we found ourselves doing everything by hand. We didn't even get to start anything other than taping until Sunday. We made up for lost time though!

As of when I left the house tonight the following had been done:

Paint - finished in the dining and living room areas, entry, hall, three bedrooms (master and children's rooms).

Flooring - walnut floor installed in dining room, living room, hallway. Sanded and will be stained tonight. Old carpet and pad removed and new carpet installed in three upstairs bedrooms (same rooms mentioned above). Old carpet removed and pad installed in remaining two bedrooms, hall and playroom. Old vinyl removed from all three bathrooms and laundry room, new subfloor installed.

Electrical - any switches that needed to be replaced were taken care of today, and we replaced the light fixtures in the dining and living rooms, cleaned up most of the vintage lights we were keeping and purchased materials to strip the paint off the bathroom light fixtures that were painted at some point. The "creative" wiring job for the garage door openers was also redone.

Tomorrow, we're scheduled to have the vinyl floor installed in the three bathrooms and laundry room. We'll also see the rest of the carpet go in. The hardwood floor will get another sanding and be sealed. We should also be able to complete painting of the kitchen, any touch up in the upstairs bedrooms and possibly even see the playroom painting completed.

After tomorrow, we won't be able to walk on the hardwood floor for three days, but we'll still be able to access the downstairs for more stripping of wallpaper adhesive. That needs to happen in one bedroom, the downstairs hall and the laundry room. Then we can paint those rooms.

Have I mentioned lately how much wallpaper SUCKS? The hours we've spent getting the layers of wallpaper down are ridiculous. There were three layers in some rooms, none of them attractive and all of them pasted like life depended upon the paper sticking to the wall.

We have been working our butts off at the house, but today we finally felt we were seeing progress. It's a good thing too - we move in Saturday!