Yesterday felt like spring. The air was clean and a bit cool but the sun felt warm, the day was long and the radiant heat meant that as we headed out for a quick bite to eat last night after working on our floors, we only needed sweatshirts. Even though today’s forecast calls for rain, there are still more signs of spring. Robins abound, the trees are getting that “fuzzy” look they get before they start producing leaves and we have over 40 garlic bulbs popping up. In four days, the calendar will tell us its spring. But to me, spring has already sprung.
Spring is such a time of renewal. While I love summer and fall, spring has its own unique place in my heart: it’s the season that kicks off nine months of fabulousness. (And even winter wasn’t that bad this year. 😊) But spring is the season that renews hope. As I watch dawn slowly break over a clouded horizon, I am feeling that same sense of hope and renewal. It feels like the last few years were wonderful but perhaps a little more busy than we would have wanted. With just a few weekends left until the floors are completely laid upstairs, it dawns on me that as those get finished, so do our big projects. And maybe, just maybe, Darryl and I will know what a summer without an Ironman or a major renovation project looks like.
The prospect of a string of more calm weekends brings its own feelings of hope and renewal. On our trip to Antigua, I think we both realized the value of both time together and leisure time. And while we always talk about making time to do things we love such as hiking, going to a museum or just relaxing outdoors, we don’t do it. There are always tasks we put in front of leisure activities. But having one week together where we were focused solely on leisure brought its own sense of calm and peace to our other everyday work. By clearly demonstrating its benefit, leisure time has elevated its value to us.
Having said all of that, today will be a bit of a big push. Today, we need to finish the floors that extend from Darryl’s interior office wall through the hallway to my interior office wall and then hang the door to his office. Why the big push, you ask? Didn’t I just talk about the need for leisure? Yep! But, I have four cats and one – our sweet, sweet Meadow – has a bit of a salty disposition when it comes to her brothers. So, she sometimes just needs time away from them. Further, I’m loud and when my husband is trying to concentrate for work, the ability to close me out can prove invaluable. We can’t install the doors until the floors are installed so… the big push.
But then, the following weeks get so much easier. There will likely be a whole weekend dedicated to finishing both of our office floors, but they will be short runs and will go fast. There will be another weekend to finish our bedroom and main closet, but again, it should go fast enough without a lot of flooring to lay. The final weekend (or two) will likely be focused on the final edge trim pieces in a few areas as well as hanging a few more doors. Ultimately, but perhaps not until fall, we will need to put up all of the baseboard and door trim. But get these floors laid and we can clean up all of our flooring projects and remove all of the renovation materials from our living spaces. At that point? I’ll be honest, the visions of weekends dedicated to being people without lots of obligations keeps coming to mind.
And mostly I want this for Darryl even more than I want it for myself. His workload is so much greater than mine that he needs to be able to clear the decks and enjoy his weekends. And right now, it feels like the timing is right. Just a few more weeks and just as the weather is getting reliably warm and beautiful, he can hang up the toolbelt.
Finally, it’s hard this morning to not feel a great sense of both accomplishment and satisfaction. I know, I’m spiking the ball a bit early on this renovation project, but we are really at the end of the end once we get this last hard part finished today. And by getting to the end of the end of the floors, we are really at the end of the end of a whole-house renovation that literally started almost a decade ago when we put in geothermal and had the house sided. The intensive work has really only been going on since January of 2021, but even that is over three years. So, there is both a huge sigh of relief and an incredible sense of satisfaction. We did this. It was hard, it was sometimes defeating and it sapped both our energy and our time. But we made it. I can see the finish line ahead of me and that feels incredibly good.
The Yuppie Homesteader 