Merry Christmas?

So why no new posts for almost a month? Easy... I was afraid of jinxing our progress, slow as it has been.

The scoop is that we're living in our house, though our belongings are sitting in a PODS container in our driveway. More specifically, we are living in a 10 x 20 portion of our house. Inmer, our handyman extraordinaire, built a temporary room in the living room for us, complete with a door, while he and his crew finish the bedrooms, bathrooms, and hallway.


The daily scenario plays out something like this:

At about 8 a.m., Inmer and his crew pull up and park on our lawn/dirt pile. Since he has a key, he graciously lets himself in. As he does, he shouts out a sincere "Good morning." To which we groggily reply from our bed, about eight feet away, "Good morning."

They start work and I get up to make coffee in our makeshift kitchenette that consists of a hot plate with two burners, a coffee maker, and a toaster. (We'll be digging out my microwave out of my storage unit sometime next week.)

Craig stays in bed, trying to gather the strength necessary to deal with the dregs of society he currently has in his class.


We have a toilet, a bathtub (no showers until the tile's up), and a refrigerator in the "scary place," i.e. utility room. Oh, and we have dust. Lots and lots and lots of dust. Though there's a plastic sheet covering the entry to the hallway and the half of the house they're working on, there's dust. There's no way to avoid it. For that reason, we haven't used our new AC unit but absolutely adore our wet/dry vac.

On the upside, we have primer on walls! That's huge! As of now, we're guesstimating that the house will be complete by the end of January, and that's only because we trust Inmer and his crew to finish. The floors will be done the second week of January, along with the installation of our kitchen.

As for our first crew of drywallers who did, in fact, disappear on us, we'll be taking them to small claims court. Joy. A valuable lesson has been learned: only pay after the work is done and done right, even if they're "trusted" acquaintances of family.

All in all, we're thankful. After all, we're spending our second Christmas together in our first house. Maybe even Santa will pay us a visit. Of course, there's no way in hell I'm clearing out all the crap we've got jammed in the fireplace. He'll just have to use the door.

Merry Christmas and Happy 2007!

Jacqui and Craig