I know. It’s been awhile. I had a really promising streak of ‘a blog a day’ and then life took over yet again and off we went on a wild ride. First, we traveled to Wisconsin for a lovely family wedding. Here are a few photos of us looking spiffy for a day. Of course nobody is looking at the camera and everyone is being a nut, but that’s family for you.
I cannot tell you how well these photos sum up our family. Calvin stiff as a board in dress clothes for posed pictures, Joel never done talking, Alex and I definitely part of the O’Connor loud family, and Drew ‘steady as she goes’. Thanks to nephew-in-law, Patrick, for his awesome camera that captures lots of images in a row so the REAL family picture is taken. (BTW…someday soon I’ll share the compiled videos of the surprise flash mob dance we did at the wedding. If you think it’s hard for me to get to blogging, you can understand how hard it is to do video production.)
After that awesome time, daughter Alex stayed in Indiana with us for a solid week which was a real treat. She got dragged down to the house a fair amount, but we were also able to enjoy some good old-fashioned hanging around time together and one lazy day on the lake (if you call being pulled behind a boat at 22 mph ‘lazy’.)
Now, back to house matters. Things have changed dramatically since the last time I connected. I’ll offer more detailed blogs and plenty of pictures on each of these in the next go round, but for now, a synopsis:
The kitchen cabinets got installed a couple of weeks ago making us believe that the room we keep telling everyone is going to be the kitchen, really IS going to be a kitchen.
The whole house has been painted! It was an instant game changer for us as room by room, my magic ‘planning binder of color’ became reality. It was also a tetrus game of organizing contractors, such as, “OK, so Jon has to completely quarantine the second floor to spray paint the trim with oil-based paint. If he can wait until 2 p.m. to do that, then Jake can get into the bathroom now to build the shelf so Sean can follow and install the water heater on it. THEN Tim can lay the tile that nobody can walk on until tomorrow which is alright for Jon because that wood trim is a different color and will get brush painted instead.” And so on. Go team!
The wood floors are in the process of being stripped and repaired for a new coat of stain. The main floor areas were stripped so quickly with monster sanders that I thought, “Why do they say this will take two weeks?” And then they started doing the follow up sanding by hand. Ahhh…I see now. God bless them. They are doing just amazing work with such careful attention to detail. So yeah, it takes two weeks. Next week is staining, so don’t come over as you’ll have to stand on the side porch and peek in the windows.
The chimneys got tuck pointed so we can rest assured that they aren’t going to fall on us someday while drinking our coffee in the garden.
Several floors got tiled, lots of lights got installed, I finally gave up trying to self clean the claw foot tub and added it to the reglazing list, the unfinished attic got a layer of insulation, we made our first-ever purchase at the world-renowned Wood Shack (or at least Fort Wayne renowned), and we sold our house. We’re keeping that last one on the down low for awhile though. No sense getting cocky and waking St. Joseph up from his hibernation until we’re safely through the closing this time. Shhhh.
If you’re still reading, you are gifted with a link to an Up To Speed video walk through of the house. I did it all in one take this time as quickly as I could…still five minutes long. Sorry!
