Upstairs

If you aren’t a regular reader or weren’t paying close attention, you might not even notice that an entire calendar year separates this post and the previous one. What can I say? I fell off the blogging horse. What happened in the past year? Is the house done? Well, I’m not going to cover a whole year of work, but the big development is yes, just one week after the last post, we moved upstairs.

One of the reasons I didn’t post right away when we moved is that people want to see pictures, and honestly, right after you move in things aren’t staged and pretty. It took us time to work through bins and boxes, unpacking things we’ve had in storage for years, getting new furniture, etc. We didn’t even have our new stove until March, with that space occupied by the old white stove from downstairs.

The contractors were only sort-of finished. They were still working on trim, the electricians didn’t want to come back because they didn’t think we were ready and we had to argue with them to get them to come back and finish up. We’d planned to have Sarah’s family over for an after-Christmas get-together, with her brother and sister-in-law flying in from Colorado and staying with us. The day they showed up was the day the electricians finished and Sarah’s family helped us move upstairs when they got here.

The list of projects yet to complete is ridiculous. Not just finishing touches, but major work including the basement and the garage and the yard. That said, we’re so happy to be out of the basement and so grateful to be in our (mostly) finished home. After ten-plus years of blood, sweat, and tears, all the help of family and friends, we’re living in our house and it’s beautiful. This past Christmas was our first chance to decorate upstairs and it was kind of magical.

I’m going to start blogging again. There’s been a lot of work this past year to catch you up on, but we also wanted to take a breather and a lot of life happened as well. There’s a lot to do yet, and I’m happy to share it as we go. We’re not going to be working as hard on the house as we did before, since the pressure is off and we’ve already spent so much time on this that we’re looking to take it easier, but there’s a lot to do and it’s not going to get done on its own.