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Spring Cleaning, Out of Season

So today was the first Saturday in awhile where we got up and actually spent most of the day (all day and evening hours) working on the house. This was even more amazing to us given the fact that by 'working on the house' we don't mean writing for this website or (even more frequent these days) reading websites about other houses.

It didn't hurt that it was almost 50 degrees in Chicago today. (A heatwave, people!) As a recap, here's what we did on this beautiful not-Spring day in February...

Rolled out of bed at 7:30 am to confer with our pal, Paul, who's helping with the tile in the bathroom. Because making four crooked walls, a slanted ceiling and a slanted floor look normal requires a bit of an intervention.

JM started in with the aspirin at 8:30 am. First batch with morning coffee! Dog is still sleeping.

The warm weather got us out into the garage to reorganize and pitch a lot of junk we'd accumulated there over the cold months. We got pretty far--we can walk around in there again! Unfortunately we didn't get far enough to allow for a good snapshot of the arts and crafts sideboard we got ourselves for Christmas, so posting photos of that will still have to wait.

Dog is still sleeping.

Momentum then propelled us to the first floor bedroom--the one we formerly were using until the ceiling came down. Since then, gaps in the exposed beams above have allowed a layer of dust and gunk to form on everything we've been storing in there...much like the morning after a new snow...except that this stuff doesn't EVER melt and it sucks to clean it off everything. Especially since the Dave the Cat got loose in there. His fur is a magnet for sawdust.

Later it was a quick trip to the lumberyard to spec out the beadboard wainscoating we'll be using in the master bathroom. Paul has already told us he's going to need the exact trim depths when he does the pattern we want on the tile floor. We had to use advanced math and geometry skills on not a lot of sleep. Always a bad idea.

Yep. Dog is still sleeping.

More cleaning. More scrubbing. Dusting. We filled both of our garbage cans, part of our friend's garbage can (he offered!) and part of my parents' garbage cans. Garbage pick-up is....Thursday. It's Saturday.

In some way, it felt we were getting back on track again. After several weekends where I didn't want to set foot upstairs at all (and often didn't), it was good to feel like we accomplished something. Hopefully, we can keep that feeling and make some good progress in the next few weekends!

But tonight? Tonight, we get a satisfied night's sleep. Except for the dog...the dog is still awake.

AND. WILL. NOT. SLEEP.

Posted by aaron on February 12, 2005 at 5:31 PM (3)

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