Once Again, the Rumors of Our Demise Have Been Highly Exaggerated

Sorry we sort of dropped off the face of the earth for a while there... we've been busy. There is FINALLY some hope that our basement will be liveable again... someday! A week ago we had some contractors come in to work on the downstairs -- aside from doing the bathroom they also repaired plaster and painted and replaced two doors and put in new baseboards. They worked really hard for the 2 days they were here. We had hoped they would put in a new back door for us, but the new door wouldn't fit into our old frame: the WHOLE frame will have to be replaced. They didn't have time to do that for us, so we'll have to get someone else, and pronto -- rain water has been steadily leaking in somehow. Thank goodness we hadn't got the new carpet yet. I just hope the leakage hasn't damaged our beautiful new walls!

Note: guys may want to skip this next paragraph -- it's going to involve a discussion about the subtleties of color shades. :) The walls of the downstairs had been two colors -- half was builder white, the other half a creamy color that I loved. Unfortunately the men only had time for one color, so they painted everything white. I really wanted a warmer color for the walls down there (it's already cold enough!), so Mr. Pickles and I agreed independently of each other that while all the furniture was pushed into the middle of the room already, and there was no floor to worry about mussing up, we should grab the opportunity and paint now before the new carpet was installed. Great minds do think alike! So the next day we picked up a gallon of "Homestead Resort Sunwash" (apparently it's a National Trust for Historic Preservation color -- ooooooh) -- a pretty, creamy, warm yellow-ish white, and went to it.

Miriam got to help us paint. Armed with cheapy sponge paintbrush, she did some prep work for us (and left big gloppy smears on the wall). Katie was upset b/c she wanted to paint too and mean mommy and daddy wouldn't let her play with the fun yellow paint and she had been up since way too early and she was hungry and nobody loved her and the world was coming to an end! So Daddy gave her some lovin's. Mr. Pickles is very talented.


Multitasking Dad

Then Miriam got bored and cranky too so while pokey Mrs. Pickles tried to catch up on the edging Mr. Pickles laid out a picnic lunch for the girls on a towel downstairs. They both became different people after they ate. It's really quite amazing what personality changes occur in our children when we feed them. After their picnic lunch they were happy and content and self-sufficient again. Miraculous.

Anyway, short story long, progress is now visible! Unfortunately, the basement won't be done as soon as we had hoped. We thought it was going to be finished by this weekend (and were planning a celebratory party), but the carpeting will take longer than we thought. We had someone come in and measure every single inch of our floor, but we need to go pick out the new carpet. And before we do that, we need a new back door. God only knows how long it's going to take to get THAT done -- with all the rain from the recent storm, plus all the repair work that still probably needs to be done from June, we're sure all the local contractors are booked solid for weeks. Hopefully St. Joseph will send someone our way soon -- otherwise Mr. Pickles is going to get an ulcer!

We're beginning to feel like our house is a money pit. One of the windows in our bedroom is showing signs of leakage too (if crumbling plaster and curtain rod brackets that just randomly fall out of the wall at 3:00 am mean anything). Hopefully that's just a matter of re-caulking around the frame outside, although the soggy plaster will probably need to be replaced. Sigh. So much for our cruise to the Caribbean! :)