Jan 9, 2010

hibernation

Winter is definitely slowing down progress. For months, it feels like, the only major changes have been made by contractors. They're important changes, don't get me wrong, but I feel like, personally, I haven't been doing anything to get this house done.

The exterior walls have been rewired. The laundry room has a wall (something I did do) and is plumbed. On Monday, a crew comes to pump insulation into the walls, and Tuesday they do the attic. There's a new HVAC system in place and a new roof up. But none of these things bring this place any closer to feeling like a home.

wall-ah!

I have a very specific plan for the next steps:
  1. Drywall the laundry room and master closet
  2. Tile the laundry room floor
  3. Build the "closet" part of the master closet, the shelves and rods and stuff, and put down carpet or something easy
  4. Move a bunch of the stuff taking up space in the dining room into the master closet
  5. Switch rooms with my roommate, so she'll take the finished addition and I'll take the unfinished master
  6. Gut and remodel the master bath


By the end of this list, I'm hoping it will be warm again. (Some pessimists would have me believe that by the end of this list, I'll be retired.) Once it's warm, I'm going to do what I should have done last summer and pull up all the subflooring. Then drywall goes up. Then the floors get repaired and refinished. Then two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, two bathrooms, a closet, and a laundry room will be done, save for the trim (which is, like, an eternity away). Then I remodel the kitchen.

Somewhere in there, outside stuff will happen as well, but that's not on as strict a timeline. I'm not going to landscape anything until all the demo's done, because with giant dumpsters in the yard, what would be the point. I would like to demo the shed out back, though, if only to get a better idea of the back yard's potential. I'd also like to replace the chain link fence so the dogs can't see every cat that wanders by and flip out. At some point, I want the addition to have a green roof, but that's so far away it's just masochism to let myself think about it.

So this is what I've been doing pretty much since the holidays started ramping up - a lot of thinking and damn little else. Today I contacted some remodeling contractors, because I want the master bath done by the time my first permits come due for inspection, which is mid-February. If I do it myself, I'm worried it'll be more like mid-June. Then again, the sun is out and at the moment I'm finally feeling motivated to paint the cabinet I've been building for the past month and install its doors. So who knows. Maybe hibernation's over.

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