More Home Renovation Lessons Learned

Still here. Still *cough, cough* covered in construction dust. Still striving for fab.

I have been a horrible blogger, I know, going for days without any contact while we were in the throes of DIY projects and covered in construction dust, but when I signed on to my reader yesterday after having been virtually out-of-commish for a little over a week, I found over 500 postings to slog through. It may take me a while to get all caught up.

As for the home renovation lessons we've been learning? Here are a few more...

16. Even if your list of DIY projects appears to be small and manageable, you will get 10 days into the list (the projected finish time), see no end in sight, and will wonder if you've bitten off more than you can chew. And you will weep and wail and gnash your teeth. (Not really, but it sounds so dramatic, doesn't it? And I'm nothing right now if not dramatic.)

17. Your family will lament the fact that the new home just doesn't feel like home yet. And you will wonder if the boxes of glass-framed family pictures and things ended up getting buried beneath boxes of stuff in the garage, hoplessly broken to smithereens. But you can't check on this because there is so much else that must take priority.

18. The house, though you spend hours each day trying to maintain a modicum of your usual high standard of cleanliness and homemaking will still look as though a bomb went off. (Oy, the dust! We're all sneezing and coughing and none of it is due to colds.)

19. It is possible for even a compulsive blogger/family chronicler/hobby photographer like myself to lose track of her camera bag (*gasp*) and her laptop (*gasp and sputter*) in the move.
20. Calling the trash company twice about your not-yet-delivered garbage cans will yield little by way of results, but you can bet they will still try to charge you for "service".

21. Bags of trash will pile up in the bed of the pick-up in your driveway for lack of any other place to put it until such a time as the recepticles finally arrive. All that is needed now are for a few broken down cars to litter the yard, and to allow the weeds to grow knee-high, and we'll really look the part of the desert rat.

22. Never leave a cup of paint thinner with a paint brush in it outside on the patio, where a toddler could push paint cans over to step up and get it. Because he will find it, spill it all over his pants, and though the pants are removed at the first discovery of chemical smell, the son's legs will not smell like paint thinner, and you will wrongly assume that it merely got on his pants. Later, however, inspection of your toddler son's "owie" will reveal a bright red rash on the top of his foot that will evidence his lengthy contact with the chemical. You will thank the Lord that your husband had the foresight to clean the bath tubs in the new home (while you were unpacking) in preparation for the families first night there, and will promptly put your child to soak, then soap it up and soak him again, and it will will (thankfully) return to normal color by late that evening. And you will be eternally grateful that said paint thinner-in-a-cup was an unappealing color of murky taupe so at least he didn't drink it. Like your (then) toddler nephew did a few years earlier when he happened upon a cup of milky-white paint thinner-in-a-cup in the new home they were moving into and took a swig while his mom raced across the floor in slow-mo, with leaden feet (like in nightmares) because he'd recently had heart surgery, and aspirating it into his lungs was a frighteningly real possibility with potentially grave consequences (though thankfully he never had any lingering problems as a result, either).

23. Compulsive perpetual listmakers like myself will go crazy during the move, both from having the well-devised lists and plans for our renovation getting tossed out the window, and from not being able to find a single piece of paper in the house (not even a scrap of scratch paper) on which to write new lists. Which results in lots of writing on the palm of my hand to stay on track for the day.

24. Ripping up the carpeting that had been in the house will prove to be a wonderful idea, because the funny smell the house seemed to have lingering inside will go away (along with the carpeting)...and will be worth every extra penny you are forced to spend on new carpeting (which thankfully ends up being far less than usual, thanks to your husband's firm refusal to go over-budget, and the carpet place's desperation for a sale in a very slow market).

25. Oldest son's bedroom will turn out drastically a tad brighter than the paint chip you'd picked out to match the 'water' on the maps you would be hanging up in his room, rendering his room a garish aqua (instead of the desired lighter shade of turquoise), because contrary to popular conjecture...paint does not dry 'lighter', and those paint chips are colored with transparent inks, not opaque paint. However, being 'turning-life's-lemons-to-lemondade' type of parents you will enthusiastically applaud his color choice (and he will, thankfully, be delighted with the results), which is a good thing, because his project-weary parents aren't likely to be changing the color any time soon.

26. It is possible to teach old dogs new tricks! I have learned (among other things) the fine art of switching out door-knobs and installing dead-bolts and door hinges, and Jeff has learned how to install new electrical light fixtures (thanks, Steve!) without incident. And our normally 'bark only when necessary' dog Raisin has learned to bark at every. single. person. that passes by our house each day.

27. Even decor-conscious folks like myself will deign to live (temporarily) with plastic garbage bags and/or newspapers taped over the front windows until I'm able to get around to hanging up curtains, because just about anything is better than that 'living in a fishbowl' feeling of not having the windows covered.

28. Your first night in the new house will not be entirely restful, as a whole new set of sounds will wake you throughout the night, requiring investigation as to the cause if you are to get any sleep at all. Including what sounded like someone breaking into the garage, but turns out to be your scaredy-cat dog pounding and scratching on the metal front door and snuffling along the bottom edge (which echoes funny through the house due to different accoustics than you were used to) to inform you that she does not like life in the front yard one. single. bit.

29. The laminate flooring that you ordered 10 days earlier (and paid for in advance) and was told should be delivered via a store-to-store transfer in just a couple of days will not actually get ordered, resulting in both rescheduling the installer and enduring another 10 days or so of dusty living on bare concrete floors. Ugh. However, we will recognize the blessing-in-disguise when we end up with a 20% discount for their mistake and our inconvenience.

30. Though the house is still in a tumultous state, having the kids settled in their beds in their new rooms after bedtime prayers, and the "Goodnight Johnboy" bedtime routine returning will bring a sense of normalcy to things once again. Who knew that parents needed those routines just as much as the kids?