I just rescued our last rescue from the top of the cabinets. Goofball that he is, every once in awhile, we find him at the highest levels of the house: on top of doors, cabinets and the catwalk on the second floor. I have no idea why he goes there but he’s not there long before he realizes he’s in trouble. Then, the plaintive cries start. Initially, it never registers. But after a couple of cries, I realize this is his “I need help” cry and not the “I’m walking around and just crying to see if one of my brothers will play with me” cry.
And once again, I rescue him. He gets scared up there and doesn’t necessarily trust me to get him at first. Finally, when he realizes it’s inevitable that I grab him, he gives in. As soon as he’s in my arms, he purrs and purrs and purrs, clinging to me as if I just rescued him from a near-death situation. For a little while, he’s extra loving, wanting to be cuddled and held. And then… .
Then, he’s off to his next adventure. His current situation? He and his brother are now running through the house, chasing each other.
That’s how we roll in this house: thrills and spills.
After a ton of work travel and stress, a somewhat harried Thanksgiving and a relatively busy November, I’m a little less inclined to thrills and spills right now. Calm and quiet. That’s my mantra. Someone just has to tell the 11-pounder.
But yesterday was a game-changer around here. I was up early (like 3 a.m.) and working, so I thought the day was bound to be a bust when I went back to bed at 6 a.m. to recover a little sleep. And honestly, when I woke back up for the second time, I was clearly prepared to write the day off. It was cold, gray and damp, I had slept poorly and there wasn’t much I was inclined to do. Yep, I went into the day at the rather late time of 9 a.m. with zero expectations. It was bound to be a lost day.
And then it wasn’t. What started as a way to just “do something” became a full-fledged cleaning of the basement. It started with removing some scrap lumber on the two sawhorses, which had almost become a regular fixture, blocking most of the free space in the basement. Since the upstairs floorboards were behind said sawhorses, the wood needed to be restacked and the sawhorses needed to be collapsed and stored. About four hours later, the basement was clean… ish. The basement was clean-ish. (If I’m honest, it still has a pretty long ways to go.)
Still, a lingering project got scratched off the list. With all of the scrap lumber – and there was a ton of it – restacked and tucked out of the way and the sawhorses gone, there was room to work. That meant other things could be regathered, cleaned up and put back where it belonged. And if it didn’t already have a home, it got one. Everything in this home is getting a home these days.
When I finally finished and still in my pjs, I was pretty stoked. Not only are we now done to just 24 items on a to-do list that started with 68 items, but it feels like the chaos is finally settling down. Let me explain.
For a long time, we were in the building/renovating/repairing mode. While our house had “gone bones,” it needed a lot of work and most of it was expensive work. We made a plan to start with infrastructure first – siding, insulation, new roof, geothermal, solar. Eventually, however, the inside needed done and all three decks needed replaced. We also had car-swallowing ditches along the road in front of our house, a slew of boulders left over from the former quarry that our house was built on and enough outdoor/landscaping projects to make a gardener cry.
It’s taken years, but today we are down to the final dregs of the interior renovations. The biggest thing to be finished is laying of the hardwood floors, which will start on December 28th. Once those floors are laid, the new doors can be installed and everything trimmed out. At that point, we will be largely done with interior renovations.
What that means for our basement – and even for corners of our largely finished first floor – is that construction materials are dwindling, freeing up large swaths of space. After we finished installing the shiplap on the ceiling of our guest bedroom a few weeks ago, all of that wood is now up and out of the basement. The floors are next, followed by trim. And as the materials dwindle, so does the sense of chaos around here.
That was obvious yesterday. When there used to be so many materials stored in the basement, it was easy to forget where something – anything – was. The speed square? Hmm… I remember seeing it but I can’t recall. Did you check the chop saw area? The painting trays? Ugh. I know I have one that I’m using to seal boards but I have no clue where the others are. Do we have enough trim boards in the right sizes to do the stacked window and door trim in the guest bathroom? If we do, we can’t get to it; I’ll just get new because we’re going to need it anyway. Those were the not-so-glorious days.
Yesterday? I ran across the nozzles for the power washer while re-arranging boxes of scrap wood. Good. They now have a home. That extra paint tray? Found it! Along with the speed square, a missing set of keys, the “good” screwdriver bit and enough trim boards to complete another window without breaking a sweat. Everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – got a home. I also vacuumed up a couple of years’ worth of basement dust, sorted and restacked like items together and generally now have a sense of what is in every little nook and cranny in the basement. Honestly? It’s not perfect but it is more organized than it has been in years.
So, although I don’t want the dust to settle physically, it does feel like rhetorically, the dust is beginning to settle. There is still opportunity to finish items and get them scratched off of the list, but it no longer feels like chaos reigns around here. As we continue to finish projects, the great purge can also begin. Ultimately, the scrap wood can be sorted again and the stuff that is not usable (and not stained or finished in any way) can become kindling, permanently removing them from the house. The extra supplies, if they won’t be used again, can be donated or sold. Items we don’t use, haven’t used and have frankly gotten shoved deeper into the basement can see both the light of day and life with a new owner.
When all of the inside stuff is done, cleaned up and put into their proper homes, we still have one more deck to build and eventually a garage. We will also need to hire a contractor at some point to redo our main bathroom, the only room in the house that our renovations did not touch. But outside projects are not nearly as disruptive as indoor projects and in the case of both the bathroom and our garage, we will hire those done.
The spills are not quite over but the thrills? They’re a-coming!
The Yuppie Homesteader 