We're feeling better, doc.

We were feeling a little hopeless rcently (but it's passing). Glum. Over challenged. You know, like people with a house half-torn apart.

Tearing up seems to be the specialty of both lucy and I. It’s kinda scary. I started to get allergic to it recently (lucy might tell you that “allergic” is Mick's new over-used emotional adjective), feeling like we by god needed to be doing some building up; enough with the tearing down. I think we’ve reached a point of panic over not finding any more things to tear down (or at least choosing not to, which is a kind of progress) and being a little too clueless about how to fix the things that we’ve torn down already. There’s this vague agreement that we’ve got to move in here. Soon. Or at least, as soon as possible.

That doesn’t have the imminent ring to it that I wish that it did.

So much work and then there’s moving. Hence, the overwelm-ment. Overwelmation. Take or pick, they both mean, shit, dawg! What we gonna do?

Well, looks like we gonna hire ourselves a contractor.

The idea is that if we don’t, it’s just going to be forever before we move in. This work is like some sort of self-replicating optical illusion, though. The closer you look the more there is to do.

Lucy and I have basically defaulted to either tearing stuff up, or buying things when this realization sets in. Not that we’re as bad as others might be. I mean, it’s not like I’ve bought any major tools yet. We bought a shop vac, okay.. Really we’ve gotten pretty far on crowbars, small lumber purchases, a hammer, hex screws, and gloves and kneepads.

The thing is, it’s actually easy to put off doing anything with a trip to Lowe’s or Home Depot. We go in, walk around, say ‘what were we looking for?’ and leave with a box of screws. So, I’m just saying, financially, it could be worse. Today, for instance, we actually bought stuff: a medicine cabinet, a wall heater, and an exhaust fan. All needed, for sure. But this led to the regular ‘chain reaction effect,’ which in this case was: how the heck do you install a wall heater?

Electricity is bedazzling us, friends. How does it work? We do not know. But we’ve heard that it has great potential.

So we’ve got these imponderables (or infinite poderables):

• Upstairs wiring – it’s knob and tube, dube. We gots to partially rewire! (not new info)
  
• The behemoth that is the bathroom – can mick just be proud of his demo work and “framing lite” and turn it over to a pro so that it might get done this century?
  
• The bedroom closet door addition – see previous

That’s where we are, or aren’t depending on your degree of optimism. Mine is actually high, but keeping eyes on the road is sometimes tricky.

To close pleasantly, here’s some of what actually did happen today.

• Climbed up on the roof and unstuck two painted-shut windows. Hurray, sweatbox upstairs!
  
• Did a quick frame-up where the bathroom door used to be, so that drywalling can happen. Now how d’ya drywall?
  
• Set some braces in the wall, so that the new medicne cabinet will hang and not come crashing down in another exciting episode.
  
• Finally did some important listing. There a lot of non-hammer swinging work to do on this project, and I think Lucy and forget that. Therefore, the listing, and some phone calling.

Coming soon: The Contractor Cometh…

We’re getting there.